








, ^iSll^iii. 




LIBRARY 

IKIVERSITY OF CALlFORf^SA 

RIVERSIDE 



(Vi 



I POSE 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NHW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO - DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 

MELBOURNE 

THE ]\IACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



I POSE 



BY 

STELLA BENSON 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1916 

All rights raerved 



THQOOS 



Copyright 1916 

By the MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1916. 



My eyes are girt with outer mists, 
My ears sing shrill — and this I bless, 
My finger-nails do bite my fists 
In ecstasy of loneliness. 
This I intend, and this I want, — 
That, passing, you may only mark 
A dumb soul and its confidante 
Entombed together in the dark. 

The hoarse church-bells of London ring. 
The hoarser horns of London croak. 
The poor brown lives of London cling 
About the poor brown streets like smoke; 
The deep air stands above my roof. 
Like water to the floating stars; 
My Friend and I — we sit aloof. 
We sit and smile, and bind our scars. 

For you may wound and you may kill — 
It's such a little thing to die — 
Your cruel God may work his will. 
We do not care — ^my Friend and I, — 
Though, at the gate of Paradise, 
Peter the Saint withhold his keys. 
My Friend and I — we have no eyes 
For Heaven ... or Hell ... or dreams like these 



PREFACE 

Sometimes I pose, but sometimes I pose 
as posing. 



I POSE 



CHAPTER I 

There was once a gardener. Not only was, but 
in all probability is, for as far as I know you may 
meet him to this day. There are no death-bed 
scenes in this book. The gardener was not the sort 
of person to bring a novel to a graceful climax by 
dying finally in an atmosphere of elevated immor- 
ality. He was extremely thin, but not in the least 
unhealthy. He never with his own consent ran any 
risk of sudden death. Nobody would ever try to 
introduce him into a real book, for he was in no way 
suitable. He was not a philosopher. Not an ad- 
venturer. Not a gay dog. Not lively : but he lived, 
and that at least is a great merit. 

In appearance the gardener was a fairly mediocre 
study in black and white. He had a white and 
wooden face, black hair as smooth as a wet seal's 
back, thin arms and legs, and enormous hands and 
feet. He was not indispensable to any one, but he 
believed that he was a pillar supporting the world. 
It sometimes makes one nervous to reflect what very 
amateur pillars the world seems to employ. 



I POSE 

He lived in a boarding-house in Penny Street, W. 
A boarding-house is a place full of talk, it has as 
many eyes as a peacock, and ears to correspond. It 
is lamentably little, and yet impossible to ignore. 
It is not a dignified foundation for a pillar. 

The gardener was twenty-three. Twenty-three is 
said to be the prime of life by those who have reached 
so far and no farther. It shares this distinction with 
every age, from ten to three-score and ten. 

On the first of June, in his twenty-fourth year, the 
gardener broke his boot-lace. The remains of the 
catastrophe dangled from his hand. String was out 
of the question; one cannot be decent dressed in 
string, he thought, with that touch of exaggeration 
common to victims of disasters. The world was a 
sordid and sardonic master, there was no heart in 
the breast of Fate. He was bereft even of his dig- 
nity, there is no dignity in the death of a boot-lace. 
The gardener's twenty-three years were stripped 
from him like a cloak. He felt little and naked. 

He was so busy with his emotions that he had 
forgotten that the door of his room was open. 

It was rather like the girl Courtesy to stand on 
the landing boldly staring in at a man sitting on his 
bedroom floor crushed by circumstances. She had 
no idea of what was fitting. Any other woman 
would have recognised the presence of despair, and 
would have passed by with head averted. 

But the girl Courtesy said, " Poor lamb, has it 
broken its boot-lace ? " 



I POSE 

The gardener continued in silence to watch the 
strangling of his vanity by the corpse of the boot- 
lace. His chief characteristic was a whole heart in 
all that he did. 

A tear should have appeared in Courtesy's eye at 
the sight of him. But it did not. 

" Give me the boot," she said, advancing into the 
room in the most unwomanly manner. And she 
knotted the boot-lace with a cleverness so unexpected 
— considering the sort of girl she was — that the 
difference in its length was negligible, and the knot 
was hidden beneath the other lace. 

" Women have their uses," thought the gardener. 
But the thought was short-lived, for Courtesy's next 
remark was: 

" There, boy, run along and keep smilin'. Some- 
body loves you." And she patted him on the cheek. 

Now it has been made clear that the gardener was 
a Man of Twenty-three. He turned his back vio- 
lently on the woman, put on his boot, and walked 
downstairs bristling with dignity. 

The girl Courtesy not only failed to be cut to the 
heart by the silent rebuke, but she failed to realise 
that she had offended. She was rather fat, and 
rather obtuse. She was half an inch taller than the 
gardener, and half a dozen years older. 

The gardener's indignation rode him downstairs. 
It spurred him to force his hat down on his head at 
a most unbecoming angle, it supplied the impetus for 
a passionate slamming of the door. But on the 

3 



I POSE 

doorstep it evaporated suddenly. It was replaced 
by a rosy and arresting thought. 

" Poor soul, she loves me," said the gardener. 
He adjusted his hat, and stepped out into London, 
a breaker of hearts, a Don Juan, unconscious of his 
charm yet conscious of his unconsciousness. " Poor 
thing, poor thing," he thought, and remembered 
with regret that Courtesy had not lost her appetite. 
On the contrary, she had been looking even plumper 
of late. But then Courtesy never quite played the 
game. 

" I begin to be appreciated," reflected the gar- 
dener. " I always knew the world would find out 
some day . . ." 

The gardener was a dreamer of dreams, and a 
weaver of many theories. His theories were not 
even tangible enough to make a philosophy, yet 
against them he measured his world. And any 
shortcomings he placed to the world's account. He 
wrapped himself in theories to such an extent that 
facts were crowded from his view, he posed until 
he lost himself in a wilderness of poses. He was 
not the victim of consistency, that most ambiguous 
virtue. The dense and godly wear consistency as 
a flower, the imaginative fling it joyfully behind them. 

Imagination seems to be a glory and a misery, a 
blessing and a curse. Adam, to his sorrow, lacked 
it. Eve, to her sorrow, possessed it. Had both 
been blessed — or cursed — with it, there would 
have been much keener competition for the apple. 

4 



I POSE 

The million eyes of female London pricked the 
gardener, or so he imagined, as he threaded the 
Strand. He felt as if a glance from his eye was a 
blessing, and he bestowed it generously. The full 
blaze of it fell upon one particular girl as she walked 
towards him. She seemed to the gardener to be 
almost worthy. Her yellow hair suffered from 
Marcelle spasms at careful intervals of an inch and 
a half, every possible tooth enjoyed publicity. The 
gardener recognised a kindred soul. A certain 
shade of yellow hair always at this period thatched 
a kindred soul for the gardener. 

He followed the lady. 

He followed her even into the gaping jaws of an 
underground station. There she bought cigarettes 
at a tobacco stall. 

" She smokes," thought the gardener. " This is 
life." 

He went close to her while she paid. She was 
not in the least miserly of a certain cheap smell of 
violets. The gardener was undaunted. 

" Shall we take a taxi. Miss?" he suggested, his 
wide eager smile a trifle damped by self-conscious- 
ness. For this was his first attempt of the kind. 
" They say Kew is lovely just now." 

It was his theory that spoke. In practice he had 
but threepence in his pocket. 

She replied, " Bless you, kid. Run 'ome to 
mammy, do." 

Her voice sounded like the scent she wore. It 

5 



I POSE 

had a hard tone which somehow brought the solitary 
threepence to mind. 

The gardener returned at great speed to Penny 
Street. 

It was lunch-time at Number Twenty-one. The 
eternal hash approached its daily martyrdom. 
Hash is a worthy thing, but it reminds you that you 
are not at the Ritz. There is nothing worse cal- 
culated to make you forget a lonely threepenny bit 
in your pocket. 

The gardener had a hundred a year. He was 
apparently the only person in London with a hun- 
dred a year, for wherever he went he always found 
himself the wealthiest person present. His friends 
gave his natural generosity a free rein. After vari- 
ous experiments in social economy, he found it cheap- 
est to rid himself of the hundred a year immediately 
on its quarterly appearance, and live on his expecta- 
tions for the rest of the time. There are drawbacks 
about this plan, as well as many advantages. But 
the gardener was a pillar, and he found it easier to 
support the world than to support himself. 

It was on this occasion that his neighbour at 
luncheon, unaware of his pillar-hood, asked him what 
he was doing for a living. 

" Living," replied the gardener. He was not ab- 
solutely sure that it made sense, but it sounded epi- 
grammatic. He was, in some lights, a shameless 
prig. But then one often is, if one thinks, at twenty- 
three. 

a 



I POSE 

*' It's all living," he continued to his neighbour. 
" It's all life. Being out of a job is life. Being 
kicked is life. Starving's life. Dying's life." 

The neighbour did not reply because he was busy 
eating. One had to keep one's attention fixed on 
the food problem at 21 Penny Street. There was 
no time for epigrams. It was a case of the survival 
of the most silent. The gardener was very thin. 

The girl Courtesy, however, was one who could 
do two things at once. She could support life and 
impart information at the same time. 

" I do believe you talk for the sake of talking," 
she said ; and it was true. " How can dying be liv- 
ing?'' 

It is most annoying to have the cold light of fem- 
inine logic turned on to an impromptu epigram. 
The gardener pushed the parsnips towards her as 
a hint that she was talking too much. But Courtesy 
had the sort of eye that sees no subtlety in parsnips. 
Her understanding was of the black and white type. 

" Death is the door to life," remarked Miss 
Shakespeare, nailing down the golden opportunity 
with eagerness. 21 Penny Street very rarely gave 
Miss Shakespeare the satisfaction of such an open- 
ing. There was, however, a lamentable lack of re- 
sponse. The subject, which had been upheld con- 
trary to the laws of gravitation, fell heavily to 
earth. 

" Is this your threepenny bit or mine? " asked the 
girl Courtesy. For that potent symbol, the victim 

7 



I POSE 

of its owner's absence of mind, In the course of vio- 
lent exercise between the gardener's plate and hers, 
had fallen into her lap. 

Whose Idea was it to make money round? I 
sometimes feel certain I could control it better if 
it were square. 

" It is mine," said the gardener, still posing as a 
philosopher. " A little splinter out of the brim- 
stone lake. Feel it." 

Courtesy smelt it without repulsion. 

" Talk again," she said. " Where would you be 
without money? " 

" Where would I be without money? Where 
would I be without any of the vices? Singing in 
Paradise, I suppose." 

" If I pocket this threepenny bit," said Courtesy, 
that practical girl, " what will you say? " 

" Thank you — and good-bye," replied the gar- 
dener. " It is my last link with the world." 

Courtesy put It in her purse. " Good-bye," she 
said. " So sorry you must go. Reserve a halo for 
me." 

The gardener rose immediately and walked up- 
stairs with decision Into his bedroom, which, by some 
freak of chance, was papered blue to match his soul. 
It was indeed the anteroom of the gardener's soul. 
Nightly he went through it into the palace of him- 
self. 

He took out of it now his toothbrush, a change 
of raiment, and Hilda. It occurs to me that I have 

s 



I POSE 

not yet mentioned Hilda. She was a nasturtium In 
a small pot. 

On his way downstairs he met Miss Shakespeare, 
who held the destinies of 21 Penny Street, and did 
not hold with the gardener's unexpected ways. 

" Your weekly account . . ." she began. 

" I have left everything I have as hostages with 
fate," said the gardener. " When I get tired of 
Paradise I'll come back." 

On the door-step he exclaimed, " I will be a merry 
vagabond, tra-la-la . . ." and he stepped out trans- 
figured — in theory. 

As he passed the dining-room window he caught 
sight of the red of Courtesy's hair, as she charac- 
teristically continued eating. 

" An episode," he thought. " Unscathed I pass 
on. And the woman, as women must, remains to 
weep and grow old. Courtesy, my little auburn 
lover, I have passed on — for ever." 

But he had to return two minutes later to fetch 
a pocket-handkerchief from among the hostages. 
And Courtesy, as she met him In the hall, nodded in 
an unsuitably unscathed manner. 

The gardener walked, with Hilda in his hand. It 
became night. Practically speaking, it is of course 
Impossible for night to occur within three paragraphs 
of luncheon-time. But actually the day Is often to 
me as full of holes as a Gruyere cheese. 

To the gardener the beginnings of a walk which 
he felt sure must eventually find a place In history 

9 



I POSE 

were torn ruthlessly out of his experience. He was 
thinking about red hair, and all things red. 

He hoped that Hilda, when she flowered, would 
be the exact shade of a certain head of hair he had 
lately seen. 

" Hoping and planning for Hilda like a mother-to- 
be," he thought, but that pose was impossible to sus- 
tain. 

Red hair. 

He did not think of the girl Courtesy at all. Only 
her hair flamed in his memory. The remembrance 
of the rest of her was as faint and lifeless as a hair- 
dresser's dummv. 

It struck him that auburn, with orange lights in the 
sunlight, was the colour of heat, the colour of heaven, 
the colour of life and love. He looked round at the 
characteristic London female passer-by, the thin- 
breasted girl, with hair the colour of wet sand, and 
reflected that Woman is a much rarer creature than 
she appears to be. 

He recovered consciousness in Kensington Gar- 
dens at dusk. He remembered that he was a merry 
vagabond. 

" Tra-la-la . . ." he sang as he passed a park- 
keeper. 

Peofple in authority seem as a rule to be shy of the 
pose. The park-keeper was not exactly shy, but he 
made a murmured protest against the Tra-la-la, and 
saw the gardener to the gate with most offensive care. 

lO 



I POSE 

In theory the gardener spent the night at the RItz. 
In practice he slept on the Embankment. He was a 
man of luck in little things, and the night was the first 
fine night for several weeks. The gardener followed 
the moon in its light fall across the sky. Several 
little stars followed it too, in and out of the small 
smiling clouds. 

The moon threaded Its way in and out of the 
gardener's small smiling dreams. Oh mad moon, 
you porthole, looking up into a fantastic Paradise ! 

The gardener did not dream of red hair. That 
subject was exhausted. 

When an undecided sun blinked through smoked 
glasses at the Thames, and at the little steamers 
sleeping with their funnels down like sea-gulls on the 
water with their heads under their wings, the gar- 
dener rose. He had a bath and a shave — in theory 
— and walked southward. Tra-la-la. 

He walked very fast when he got beyond the tram- 
ways, but after a while a woman who was walking 
behind him caught him up. Women are apt to get 
above themselves in these days, I think. 

" I'm going to walk with you," said the woman. 

"Why?" asked the gardener, who spent some 
ingenuity in saying the thing that was unexpected, 
whether possible or impossible. 

" Because you're carrying that flower-pot," replied 
the woman. " It's such absurd sort of luggage to 
be taking on a journey." 

II 



I POSE 

"How do you know I'm going on a journey?" 
asked the gardener, astonished at meeting his match. 

" By the expression of your heels." 

The gardener could think of nothing more apt to 
say than " Tra-la-la . . ." so he said it, to let her 
know that he was a merry vagabond. 

The woman was quite plain, and therefore worthy 
only of invisibility in the eyes of a self-respecting 
young man. She had the sort of hair that plays 
truant over the ears, but has not vitality enough to 
do it prettily. Her complexion was not worthy of 
the name. Her eyes made no attempt to redeem her 
plainness, which is the only point of having eyes in 
fiction. Her only outward virtue was that she did 
not attempt to dress as if she were pretty. And even 
this is not a very attractive virtue. 

She carried a mustard-coloured portmanteau. 

" I know what you are," said the gardener. 
" You are a suffragette, going to burn a house down." 

The woman raised her eyebrows. 

" How curious of you ! " she said. " You are per- 
fectly right. Votes for women! " 

" Tra-la-la . . ." sang the gardener wittily. 

(You need not be afraid. There is not going to 
be so very much about the cause in this book.) 

They walked some way in silence. The gardener, 
of course, shared the views of all decent men on this 
subject. On-e may virtuously destroy life in a good 
cause, but to destroy property is a heinous crime, 
whatever its motive. 

12 



I POSE 

(Yes, I know that made you tremble, but there are 
not many more paragraphs of it.) 

Presently they passed a car, pillowed against a 
grassy banlv. Its attitude, which looked depressed, 
was not the result of a catastrophe, but of a picnic. 
In the meadow, among the buttercups, could be seen 
four female hats leaning together over a little square 
meal set forth in the grass. 

" Look," said the suffragette, in a voice thin with 
scorn. 

The gardener looked, but could see nothing that 
aroused in him a horror proportionate to his com- 
panion's tone. 

" Listen," said the suffragette half an octave 
higher. 

The gardener listened. But all he heard was, 
" Oh, my dear, it was too killing . . ." 

Then, because the chauffeur on the bank paused 
in mid-sandwich, as if about to rebuke their curiosity, 
they walked on. 

" One is born a woman," said the suffragette. 
"A woman in her sphere — which is the home. 
One starts by thinking of one's dolls, later one thinks 
about one's looks, and later still about one's clothes. 
But nobody marries one. And then one finds that 
one's sphere — which is the home — has been a 
prison all along. Has it ever struck you that the 
tragedy of a woman's life is that she has time to think 
— • she can think and organise her sphere at the same 
time. Her work never lets her get away from her- 

13 



I POSE 

self. I tell you I have cried with disgust at the sound 
of my own name — I won't give it to you, but it 
might as well be Jane Brown. I have gasped ap- 
palled at the banality of my Sunday hat. Yet I kept 
house excellently. And now I have run away, I am 
living a wide and gorgeous life of unwomanliness. 
I am trying to share your simplest privilege — the 
privilege you were bom to through no merit of your 
own, you silly little boy — the privilege of having 
interests as wide as the world if you like, and of 
thinking to some purpose about England's affairs. 
My England. Are you any Englisher than I? " 

" You are becoming Incoherent," said the gar- 
dener. " You are enjoying a privilege which you do 
not share with me — the privilege of becoming hys- 
terical in public and yet being protected by the law. 
You are a woman, and goodness knows that is privi- 
lege enough. It covers everything except politics. 
Also you have wandered from the point, which at one 
time appeared to be a picnic." 

(Courage. There is only a little more of this. 
But you must allow the woman the privilege of 
the last word. It is always more dignified to allow 
her what she is perfectly certain to take in any 
case.) 

" The picnic was an example of that sphere of 
which ' Oh, my dear, too killing . . .' is the motto. 
You educate women — to that. I might have been 
under one of those four hats — only I'm not pretty 
enough. You have done nothing to prevent it. I 

14 



I POSE 

might have been an ' Oh, my dear ' girl, but thank 
heaven I'm an incendiary instead." 

That was the end of that argument. The gar- 
dener could not reply as his heart prompted him, be- 
cause the arguments that pressed to his lips were too 
obvious. 

Obviousness was the eighth deadly sin in his eyes. 
He would have agreed with the Devil rather than 
use the usual arguments In favour of virtue. That 
was his one permanent pose. 

A little way off, on a low green hill, the suffragette 
pointed out the home of a scion of sweated industry, 
the house she intended to burn down. High trees 
bowed to each other on either side of It, and a little 
chalky white road struggled up to Its door through 
fir plantations, like you or me climbing the world for 
a reward we never see. 

" I'm sorry," said the gardener. " I love a house 
that looks up as that one does. I don't like them 
when they sit conceitedly surveying their ' well- 
timbered acres ' under beetle brows that hide the sky. 
Don't burn It. Look at It, holding up its trees like 
green hands full of blessings." 

" In an hour or two the smoke will stand over It 
like a tree — like a curse . . ." 

When they parted the gardener liked her a little 
because she was on the wrong side of the law. 
There Is much more room for the wind to blow and 
the sun to shine beyond the pale — or so it seems to 
the gardener and me standing wistful and respectable 

15 



I POSE 

Inside. It Is curious to me that one of the few re- 
maining Illusions of romance should cling to a con- 
nection with that most prosy of all Institutions — the 
law. 

I forgot to mention that the gardener borrowed a 
shilling from the suffragette, thus rashly forming a 
new link with the world In place of the one he had 
relinquished to the girl Courtesy. The worst of the 
world Is that It remains so absurdly conservative, and 
rudely Ignores our Interesting changes of pose and 
of fantasy. I have been known to crave for a penny 
bun in the middle of a visit from my muse, and that 
Is not my fault, but Nature's, who created appetites 
and buns for the common herd, and refused to adapt 
herself to my abnormal psychology. 

It was interesting to the gardener to see how easily 
the suffragette parted with such an Important thing as 
a shilling. Superfluity is such an Incredible thing to 
the hungry. The suffragette gave Holloway Gaol 
as her permanent address. 

Thus accidentally bribed, the gardener, feasting 
on a cut from the joint in the next village, refrained 
from discussing women, their rights or wrongs, or 
their local intentions, with the village policeman. 
" She won't really dare do It," he thought. 

(I may here add that I was not asked by a militant 
society to write this book. I am writing it for your 
instruction and my own amusement.) 

The gardener did not sleep under a hedge as all 
merry vagabonds do — (Tra-la-la) — but he slept 

i6 



I POSE 

in the very middle of a large field, much to the sur- 
prise of the cows. One or two of these coffee- 
coloured matrons awoke him at dawn by means of an 
unwinking examination that would have put a lesser 
man out of countenance. But the gardener, as be- 
comes a man attacked by the empty impertinences of 
females, turned the other way and presently slept 
again. 

He washed next morning near to where the cows 
drank. He had no soap and the cows had no tum- 
blers, — nothing could have been more elemental 
than either performance. 

" I am very near to the heart of nature — tra-la- 
la," trilled the gardener. But the heart of nature 
eludes him who tries to measure the distance. The 
only beat that the gardener heard was the soft thud 
of his own feet along the thick dust of the highway. 

About the next day but one he came to a place 
where the scenery changed its mind abruptly, flung 
buttercups and beeches behind it, and drew over its 
shoulders the sombre cloak of heather and pines. 

Under an unremarkable pine tree, listening to the 
impatient summons of the woodpecker (who, I 
think, is the feathered soul of the foolish virgin out- 
side the bridegroom's door), sat a man. He was 
so fair that he might as well have been white-haired. 
His eyes were like two copper sequins set between 
white lashes, beneath white brows, in a white face. 
His lips were very red, and if he had seemed more 
detached and less friendly, he would have looked 

17 



I POSE 

like harlequin. But he rose from his seat on the 
pine needles, and came towards the gardener, as 
though he had been waiting for him. 

The gardener steeled himself against the 
stranger's first word, fearing lest he should say, 
" What a glorious day! " 

But the stranger, making a spasmodic attempt to 
remove a hat which had been left at home, said, 
" My name is Samuel Rust, a hotel-keeper. 
Won't you come and look at my place? " 

It was impossible for the gardener to do other- 
wise, for Mr. Samuel Rust's place framed itself in 
a gap in the woods to the right, and was introduced 
by a wave of its owner's hand. 

" What a red place! " said the gardener. 

" Of course. No other name is possible for it," 
said Mr. Rust. 

The house was built of red brick that had much 
tangerine colour In it. The flowering heather 
surged to its very door-step. And thick around it 
the slim pine tree-trunks shot up, like flame, whis- 
pered flame. 

The gardener smiled at it. If only Hilda might 
be the colour of those tree-trunks when she flowered. 

Mr. Rust acknowledged the smile in the name of 
his red place. " It's an — inoffensive little hole," 
he said. 

What he meant was of course, " It's a perfectly 
exquisite spot." What is becoming of our old elo- 
quence and enthusiasm? The full-blooded conven- 

ig 



I POSE 

tions are dying, and we have already replaced them 
by a code of shadows. But whether the life beneath 
the code is as vivid as ever, remains to be seen. I 
think myself that manners are changing, but not 
man. In all probability we shall live to greet the 
day when " fairly decent " will express the most 
ecstatic degree of rapture. 

The gardener was not intentionally modern. It 
is the tendency of his generation to be modern — 
It is difficult to believe that It has been the tendency 
of every generation from the prehistoric down- 
wards. And It was the gardener's ambition to walk 
in the opposite direction to the tendency of his gen- 
eration. He shared the common delusion that by 
walking apart he could be unique. This arises from 
the divine fallacy that man makes man, that he has 
the making of himself In his own hands. 

I am glad that I share this pathetic Illusion with 
my gardener. 

So, as he thought the Red Place very beautiful, he 
said, " I think It is very beautiful." 

But even so he was not sincere throughout. He 
posed even in his honesty. For he posed purposely 
as an honest man. 

Of course you know that one of the most effective 
poses is to pose as one who never poses. A rough 
diamond with a heart of gold. 

The first moment Mr. Samuel Rust heard the gar- 
dener say Tra-la-la he ceased to have a doubt as to 
the species of citadel he had Invaded. 

19 



I POSE 

" You are one of these insouciant wanderers, 
what? " he suggested. " A light-hearted genius go- 
ing to make a fortune grow out of the twopence in 
your pocket. You got yourself out of a book. I 
think your sort make your hearts light by blowing 
them up with gas." 

True to his code, he then feared that he had 
spoken with insufficient mediocrity, and blushed. A 
small circular patch of red, like a rose, appeared high 
up on either cheek, suddenly bringing the rest of 
his face into competition with his vivid lips. 

" You are wrong about the twopence," said the 
gardener, " I have three halfpence." 

" Come and see my Red Place," said Mr. Rust. 
" That is, if you're not bored." 

Boredom and the gardener were strangers. One 
can never be bored if one is always busy creating 
oneself with all the range of humanity as model. 

" This is an hotel," said the owner, as they ap- 
proached the door. " It Is my hotel, and it 
promised to make my fortune. So far it has confined 
itself to costing a fortune. When I remind it 
of its promise it puts its tongue in its cheek — 
what?" 

The northern side of the Red Place was quite dif- 
ferent in character from the side which first smiled 
on the gardener. This was because one essential 
detail was lacking — the heather. Fire had passed 
over the little space at some recent date in its sleepy 
history, and had left it sinister. Tortured roots 

20 



I POSE 

and branches appealed from the black ground to a 
blue heaven. The surrounding pine trees, with 
their feet charred and blistered, and their higher 
limbs still fiercely red, still looked like flames now 
turned into pillars of delight in answer to the prayer 
of the beseeching heather. 

"Is there anybody in your hotel?" asked the 
gardener, smoothing his hair hopefully — the young 
man's invariable prelude to romance. 

" Nobody, except the gods," replied the host. 
" We sit here waiting, the divine and I. There is 
a blessing on the place, and I intend to make money 
out of it. You can see for yourself how wonder- 
fully good it is. If people knew of the peace and 
the delight. . . . The table is excellent too — I 
am the chef as well as the proprietor. Our terms 
are most moderate." 

" All the same you need advertisement," said the 
gardener, who, in unguarded moments, was more 
modern than he knew. " I can imagine most sensa- 
tional advertising of a place with such a pronounced 
blessing on it. Buy up the front page of the Daily 
Mail, and let's compose a series of splashes." 

" I am penniless," began Mr. Rust dramatically, 
and interrupted himself. " A slight tendency 
towards financial inadequacy — what?" 

" I have three halfpence," said the gardener, but 
not hopefully. 

" Come in for the night," begged the host. " I 
have twelve bedrooms for you to sleep in, and three 

21 



I POSE 

bathrooms tiled in red. Terms a halfpenny, tout 
compris/' 

" Tra-la-la . . ." trilled the gardener, for as he 
followed his host the heather tingled and tossed be- 
neath his feet, and the gods came out to meet him 
with a red welcome. 

"You have nothing to do — what?" said Mr. 
Samuel Rust, when they were sitting in the high rus- 
set hall. 

" We-U . . ." answered the gardener, feeling 
that the sugestion of failure lurked there. " I am a 
rover, you know. Busy roving." 

" To say that shows you haven't roved sixty miles 
yet. When you've roved six hundred you'll see 
there's nothing to be got out of roving. When 
you've roved six thousand you'll join the Travellers' 
Club and be glad it's all over." 

" Six thousand miles . . ." said the gardener, as 
if It were a prayer. His heart looked and leapt 
towards the long, crowded perspective that those 
words hinted. 

" You've never been to sea," continued Mr. 
Samuel. And the gardener discovered with a jerk 
that he was a blue man born for the sea, and that he 
had never yet felt the swing of blue water beneath 
his feet. 

" No," he said, " I believe I must go there now." 

And he jumped to his feet. 

" If you stay here for the night," said Mr. Rust, 
*' to-morrow I'll suggest to you something that — 



I POSE 

may possibly interest you to some slight extent." 

With a clumsy blood-red pottery candlestick, 
which was so careless in detail as to seem to be the 
unconscious production of a drunken master-potter, 
the gardener found his room. 

(I know It is a shock to you to find It bedtime at 
this point, but the gardener and I forgot to notice 
those parts of the day which I have not mentioned.) 

He dreamt of red hair, redder than natural, as 
red as a sunset, seen at close quarters from Paradise. 
At midnight he awoke, In the clutch of perfectly ir- 
relevant thoughts. 

The room was a velvet cube, with the window 
plastered at one side of It, a spangled square. And 
the silken moonlight was draped across the floor. 

" I am myself," said the gardener. " I am my 
world. Nothing matters except me. I am the cre- 
ator and the created." 

With which happy thought he returned to sleep 
again. 

The Red Place lost Its flame-like life at night. 
Night, that blind angel, has no dealings with colour, 
and turns even the auburn of the pine-trunks to cold 
silver. But before the gardener awoke again, the 
sun had roused the gods of the place to discover the 
theft of their red gold, and to replace It. 

The gardenerj as he trilled like a lark in one of 

the red-tiled bathrooms, was suddenly reminded that 

he was a merry vagabond. 

" I must disappear," he thought. " No true vag- 

23 



I POSE 

abond ever says, ' Good-bye, and thank you for my 
pleasant visit.' " 

So he prepared to disappear. From his bedroom 
window he could see, as he dressed, the pale head 
of Mr. Samuel Rust on a far fir-crowned slope, look- 
ing away over the green land towards London, wait- 
ing, side by side with the divine. 

The gardener took three slices of dry bread from 
the breakfast which waited expectantly on a table 
in the hall, and went out. But under a gorse bush 
amongst the heather, he found some tiny scarlet 
flowers. He picked two or three, and returning put 
them on the breakfast plate of Mr. Samuel Rust. 
He put a halfpenny there too. 

"Very vagabondish — tra-la-la . . ." he mur- 
mured tunefully, and studied the infinitesimal effect 
with his head on one side. 

Then he disappeared. He did it straightfor- 
wardly along the open road, as the best vagabonds 
do, and he was pleased with his fidelity to the 
part. 

Presently he recalled for the first time Mr. Samuel 
Rust's promise of a happy suggestion for that morn- 
ing. For a moment he wondered, for a second he 
regretted, but he posed as being devoid of curiosity. 
This is a good pose, for in time it comes true. It 
eventually withers the little silly tentacles which at 
first it merely ignores. Curiosity needs food as 
much as any of us, and dies soon if denied it. And 
I am glad, for it seems to me that curiosity and spite 

24 



I POSE 

are very closely akin, and that spite Is very near to 
the bottom of the pit. 

The memory of Mr. Rust's remark, however, 
kept the gardener for some moments busy being 
incurious. He was not altogether successful in his 
pose, for when the pallid owner of the Red Place 
stepped out of a thicket in front of him, he thought 
with a secret quiver, " Now I shall know what it 
was . . ." 

"Taking a morning walk — what?" remarked 
Mr. Rust, achieving his ambition, the commonplace, 
for once in perfection. 

" No," replied the gardener (one who never told 
a He unless he was posing as a liar), " I was leaving 
you. I have left a smile of thanks and a halfpenny 
on your plate. You know I'm a rover, an incurable 
vagabond, and my fraternity never disappears in an 
ordinary way in the station fly." 

It is rather tiresome to have to explain one's 
poses. It is far worse than having to explain one's 
witticisms, and that is bad enough. 

" Come back to breakfast," said Samuel. " I can 
let you into a much more paying concern than vaga- 
bondage." 

It is not In the least impressive to disappear by 
brute force In public, so the gardener turned back. 

The gods did not run out to meet the returning 
vagabond, as they had run out to meet him arriving. 
The gardener did not look for them. He was too 
much occupied in thinking of small cramping things 

25 



I POSE 

like " paying concerns." The expression sounded 
to him Hke a foggy square room papered in a drab 
marbled design. 

" A paying concern does not interest me at all," 
he said, feeling rather noble. 

" It won't as long as you're a merry vagabond. 
But your situation as such is not permanent, I think. 
Wouldn't you like to go and strike attitudes upon 
the sea?" 

The gardener was intensely interested In what 
followed. 

Mr. Samuel Rust was penniless, owing, as he 
frankly admitted, to propensities which he shared 
with the common sieve. But in other directions he 
was well supplied with blessings. He had, for in- 
stance, a mother. And the mother — well, you 
know, she managed to scrape along on nine thousand 
a year — what? The said mother, excellent woman 
though she was, had refused to finance the Red 
Place. She had not come within the radius of its 
blessing. She had no Idea that it was under the 
direct patronage of the gods, and that It promised a 
fortune in every facet. Samuel had explained these 
facts to her, but she had somehow gathered the im- 
pression that he was not unbiassed. In her hand she 
held the life of the Red Place, and at present held it 
checked. A little money for advertisement, a few 
hundred pounds to set the heart of the place beating, 
and Samuel Rust saw himself a successful man, 
standing with his gods on terms of equahty. But 

26 



I POSE 

his mother had become inaccessible, she had in fact 
become so wearied by the conversation of Samuel 
upon the subject that she had made arrangements 
to emigrate to Trinity Islands, somewhere on the 
opposite side of the world. 

" And what is it to do with me? " asked the gar- 
dener, who suffered from the drawbacks of his par- 
amount virtue, enthusiasm, and never could wait for 
the end of anything. " Do you want me to turn 
into an unscrupulous rogue and dog her footsteps 
because " 

" You can have scruples or not as you choose," 
said Mr. Rust. " But rogue is a word that exas- 
perates me. It's much the same as ' naughty- 
naughty,' and that is worse than wickedness. The 
wicked live on brimstone, which is at least honest; 
but the naughty-naughty play with it, which is irrev- 
erent. With or without your scruples, armed only 
with the blessing and the promise of this place, I 
want you to cross the Atlantic on the Caribbeania 
with my mother, and tell her what it is the gods and 
I are waiting for. That is — just try and talk the 
old lady round — don't you know. Any old 
twaddle would do — what? " 

The gardener produced two halfpennies, one of 
which he placed on each knee. 

" And the fare first-class is . . ." he said. 

" I have a cousin whose only virtue is that he 
occasionally serves the purpose of coin," said Mr. 
Rust. " That Is — I know a fellow I can bleed to a 

27 



I POSE 

certain extent — what? He is the son of — well, 
a middling K-nut at the top of the shipping tree — 
what?" 

The gardener had visions of an unscrupulous 
rogue, neatly packed into a crate labelled cham- 
pagne, being smuggled on board the Carihbeania. 
Truly the pose had possibilities. The affair was, 
however, vague at present, and the gardener re- 
tained, whatever the role he was playing, an accurate 
mind and a profound respect for the exactness of 
words. 

" Will he stow me away? " he asked. 

" Not in the way you mean. But there'll be room 
for you on the Carihbeania. Come down to South- 
ampton with me now. There's a train at noon." 

" I have my own feet, and a good white road," 
replied the gardener in a poetic voice. " I'll join 
you in Southampton this evening." 

" It's thirty-five miles," said Mr. Rust. " And 
the boat sails to-morrow morning. However . . . 
We haven't discussed the business side of the affair 
yet." 

" And we never will. I'll take my payment out 
in miles — an excellent currency." 

In spite of the distance of his destination, the gar- 
dener stood by his determination to go by road. A 
friendly farmer's cart may always be depended on 
to assist the pose of a vagabond. It would have 
been extremely hackneyed to approach the opening 
door of life by train. So he left his blessing with 

28 



I POSE 

the Red Place, and shook the hand of its white mas- 
ter, and set his face towards the sea. 

It was still early. The sun had set the long limbs 
of the tree-shadows striding about the woods; the 
gorse, a tamed expression of flame, danced in the 
yellow heat; the heather pressed like a pigmy army 
bathed in blood about the serene groups of pines. 
There was great energy abroad, which kept the air 
a-tingle. The gardener almost pranced along. 

Presently he came to a woman seated by the road- 
side engrossed in a box of matches. 

" You again," said the gardener to the suffragette, 
for he recognised her by her hat. There was a 
bunch of promiscuous flowers attached to her hat. 
They were of an unsuitable colour, and looked as 
though they had taken on their present situation as 
an after-thought, when the hat was already well 
advanced in years. A manage de convenance. 

"Have you any matches?" was the suffragette's 
characteristic reply. 

" I never give away my matches to people with 
political opinions without making the fullest en- 
quiries," replied the gardener. " People are not 
careful enough about the future morals of their in- 
nocent matches in these days." 

Forgetting the thirty-five miles, he sat down on 
the bank beside her, and began to refresh Hilda by 
splashing the water into her pot out of a tiny heath- 
ery stream that explored the roadside ditch. 

" I can supply you with all particulars at once," 

29 



I POSE 

said the suffragette In a businesslike voice. *' T am 
going to burn down a little red empty hotel that 
stands in the woods behind you. There Is only one 
man in charge." 

" You are not," said the gardener, descending 
suddenly to unfeigned sincerity. 

" Certainly It Is not the home of an Anti," con- 
tinued the suffragette. Ignoring his remark. " At 
least as far as I know. But you never can tell. A 
Cabinet Minister might want to come and stay there 
any time; there are good golf-links. I had hoped 
that the last affair, the burning of West Grove — a 
most successful business — would have been my last 
protest for the present. I meant to be arrested, and 
spend a month or two at the not less Important work 
of setting the teeth of the Home Office on edge. 
But the police are disgracefully lax In this part of 
the world, and though I left several clues and flour- 
ished my portmanteau in three neighbouring vil- 
lages, nothing happened. I do not like to give my- 
self up, It is so inartistic, and people are apt to trans- 
late It as a sign of repentance. But the little hotel 
Is a splenlid opportunity." 

One of the drawbacks of posing yourself Is that 
you are apt to become a little blind to the poses of 
others. Also you must remember that women, and 
especially rebellious women, were an unexplored 
continent to the gardener. 

" You are not going to take advantage of the op- 
portunity," said the gardener, refreshing Hilda so 

30 



I POSE 

violently that she stood up to her knees in water. 

" I've heard the caretaker is constantly out . . ." 
went on the suffragette. 

" Possibly," admitted the gardener. " But if the 
house were twenty times alone, you should not light 
a match within a mile of it. How dare you — you 
a great strong woman — to take advantage of the 
weak gods who can't defend themselves." 

The great strong woman crinkled her eyes at him. 
She was absurdly small and thin. 

" Well, if you won't lend me any matches, I shall 
have to try and do with the three I have. I am 
going to reconnoitre. Good-morning." 

There is nothing so annoying as to have one's 
really impressive remarks absolutely ignored. I 
myself can bear a great deal of passing over. You 
may with advantage fail to see my complexion and 
the cut of my clothes; you may be unaware of the 
colour of my eyes without offending me; I do not 
care if you never take the trouble to depress your 
eyes to my feet to see if T take twos or sevens; you 
ma})' despise my works of art — which have no value 
except in the eyes of my relations; you may refuse to 
read my writings — which have no value In any eyes 
but my own, — all these things you may do and still 
retain my respect, but when I speak you must listen 
to what I say. If you don't, I hate you. 

The gardener felt like this, and the retreating 
form of the suffragette became hateful to him. 
Somehow delightfully hateful. 

31 



I POSE 



(( 



Come back," he shouted, but incredible though 
it may seem, the woman shrugged one shoulder at 
him, and wali^ed on towards the Red Place. 

It was most undignified, the gardener had to run 
after her to enforce his will. He arrived by her 
side breathless, with his face the colour of a slightly 
anaemic beetroot. It is very wrong of women to 
place their superiors in such unsuperior positions. 

I hope I do not strilce you as Indulging my suf- 
fragettism at the expense of the gardener. I am 
very fond of him myself, and because that Is so, his 
conceit seems to me to be one of his principal 
charms. There Is something Immorally attractive 
in a baby vice that makes one's heart smile. 

The gardener closed his hand about the suffra- 
gette's thin arm. 

*' You will force me to take advantage of my priv- 
ilege," he said, and looked at his own enormous 
hand. 

' The suffragette stood perfectly still, looking in 
the direction she wanted to go. 

" Turn back," said the gardener. But she made 
a sudden passionate effort to twist her arm out of his 
grasp. It was absurd, and very nearly successful, 
like several things that women do. 

The gardener's heart grew black. There seemed 
nothing to be done. No end could be Imagined to 
the incident. His blue sea future dissolved. He 
pictured himself standing thus throughout eternity, 
with his hand closed around the little splinter of life 

32 



I POSE 

she called her arm. Time seemed to pass so slowly 
that in a minute he found he knew her looks by 
heart. And yet he was not weary of them. I sup- 
pose the feeling he found in himself was due to a cer- 
tain reaction from the exalted incident of the blue 
and golden young lady who had divined the loneli- 
ness of the threepenny bit. For he discovered that 
he did not so very much mind hair that had but little 
colour in it, and that he found attractive a pointed 
chin, and an under lip that was the least trifle more 
out-thrust than its fellow. 

" Do you know why I want to stop you? " he said 
at last. 

" Yes." 

"Why?" 

" Because you are not a woman, and don't under- 
stand." 

" Because I am a man, and I understand." 

She was silent. 

" Do you know what I mean? " 

" Yes." 

" You don't. I mean that I am a man, and I 
am not going to let you go, because you must come 
with me to the uttermost ends of the earth." 

"Why?" 

" Because I love the shape of your face, you dear 
little thing." 

The gods should not be disturbed. Also there 
was something very potent in the impotent trembling 
of her arm. 

33 



I POSE 

There was an unnaturally long pause. Then she 
turned round. 

" Let us discuss this matter," she said, and gave 
him her portmanteau to carry. The gardener 
loosed her arm and walked beside her. Silence and 
a distance of a yard and a half were maintained be- 
tween them for some way. 

The gardener was gazing in blank astonishment 
at that ass, the gardener of three minutes ago. Into 
what foolery had he not plunged? 

If I could always be the Woman I Am, I should 
be a most rational and successful creature. It is the 
Woman I Was who makes a fool of me, and leaves 
me nervous as to the possible behaviour of the 
Woman I Shall Be. 

There was something in the way the suffragette's 
neck slipped loosely into her collar which took a little 
of the sting out of the gardener's regrets. But the 
little plain eyes of her, and the aggressive manners 
of her, and the misguided morals of her — that was 
the sequence in which the gardener's thoughts fell 
into line. 

As for the suffragette, her heart, in defiance of 
anatomy, had gone to her head, and was thundering 
rhythmically there. She was despising herself pas- 
sionately, and congratulating herself passionately. 
How grand — she thought : how contemptible — 
she thought. For she was a world's worker, a 
wronged unit seeking rights, a co-heritor of the 
splendour of the earth, a challenger, a warrior. 

34 



I POSE 

And now, quite suddenly, she discovered a fact the 
existence of which she had seldom, even in weak mo- 
ments, suspected. She found that — taken off her 
guard — she was a young woman of six-and-twenty. 

"How laughable," she thought — and did not 
laugh — " I'm as bad as the ' Oh my dear ' girls." 

" Now," she said at last, " what did you mean by 
that?" 

" Only that you look like a good friend," replied 
the gardener, who, poor vagabond, was blushing 
furiously. " Mightn't we be friends? " 

" I am a friend to women," said the suffragette 
slowly. " I'm a lover of women. But never of 
men. I wouldn't stir an inch out of my way for a 
man. Unless I wanted to." 

'^ And do you want to? " 

She looked at the gardener's profile with the eyes 
of the newly discovered young woman of six-and- 
twenty. Hitherto she had seen him only with the 
militant eyes of armed neutrality. She looked at 
the rather pleasing restlessness of his eyes, and the 
high tilt of his head. His eyes were not dark with 
meaning, as the eyes of heroes of novels should be, 
they were light and quick. The black pupils looked 
out fierce and sharp, like the pupils of a cat, which 
flash like black sparks out of the twilight of its soul. 
The gardener's eyes actually conveyed little, but 
they looked like blinds, barely concealing something 
of great value. 

Presently the suffragette said: "Can you im- 

35 



/ 



I POSE 

agine what you feel like if you had been running in a 
race, and you had believed you were winning. The 
rest were miles behind wasting their breath vari- 
ously; and then suddenly your eyes were opened, 
and you saw that you had been running outside the 
ropes of the course, for you were never given the 
chance to enter for the competition." 

" Good," said the gardener enthusiastically. 
" So you're tired of running to no purpose, and 
you're coming back to the starting-place to begin 
again." 

"No," said the suffragette, as firmly as though 
she had the muscular supremacy and could start back 
that moment to pit her three matches against the 
gods. " Never. There's no such thing as running 
to no purpose. It's excellent exercise — running, 
but I'll never run with the crowd. There are much 
better things than winning the prize. There's more 
of everything out here — more air, more light, more 
comedy, more tragedy. Also I get there first, you 
know. When you get the law-abider and the 
church-goer in a crowd, they increase its moral tone, 
but they lessen Its power of covering the ground." 

" Personally I never was inside," said the gar- 
dener, who had a natural preference for talking 
about himself. " But then I am building a path of 
my own." 

"Anyway, what did you mean originally?" 

The gardener blushed again. He showered re- 
proaches on himself. " Only that we might walk 

36 



I POSE 

into Southampton as friends. And if we liked 
it. . . . Besides I owe you a shilling, and you'd bet- 
ter keep an eye on your financial interests. My boat 
sails to-morrow. You know, it is a nice shock to me 
to find that a militant suffragette is human at all. 
When I held your arm, I was surprised to find it was 
not iron." 

" Did you say your boat sailed to-morrow? " 

" I should have said, ' Our boat sails to-mor- 
row.' " 

" There's no time to walk. We'll hire a car in 
Aldershot." 

So at sunset, side by side, they arrived in sight 
of Southampton's useful but hackneyed sheet of 
water. 

Even then they had no plans. In youth one likes 
the feeling of standing on empty air with a blank in 
front of one. 

The suffragette paid for the car without question. 
" I am quite well off," she excused herself, as they 
traversed the smug and comfortless suburbs of the 
town. " Has that shilling I lent you to invest 
brought in any interest? " 

" I hate money," posed the gardener; " but I have 
a profession, you know. T am a gardener." 

" And where is your garden? " 

" T have two. This is one " — and he held up 
Hilda, who was looking rather round-shouldered 
owing to the exertions and emotions of the day — 
" and the world is the other. It also happens that 

37 



I POSE 

I have had three months' training in a horticultural 
college." 

The gardener did not talk like this naturally, any 
more than you or I do. But in addition to his many 
other poses he posed as being unique. Unfortu- 
nately there is nothing entirely unique except insan- 
ity. Of course there are better things than insanity. 
On the other hand, it is rather vulgar to be perfectly 
sane. 

The suffragette went to an hotel, and the gar- 
dener went to meet Mr. Samuel Rust at their ap- 
pointed meeting-place. 

Mr. Rust looked even more colourless against the 
brownness of the town than he had seemed against 
the redness of his place. He wore town clothes, 
too, and one noticed them, which is what one does 
not do with a well-dressed man. The ideal, of 
course, is to look as if the Almighty made you to 
fit your clothes. There are a great many unfortu- 
nates whose appearance persists in confessing the 
truth — that the tailor made their clothes to fit 
them. 

Mr. Samuel Rust, however, was not self- 
conscious. He escaped that pitfall, but left other 
people to be conscious of his appearance for him. 

" Come along," he said, skipping up to the gar- 
dener like a goat, or like a little hill. " I've 
sounded my cousin on the telephone, and the outlook 
is not otherwise than middling hopeful. He's 
promised, in fact, to ship you on board the Carib- 

38 



I POSE 

beania. The question is — what as? What can 
you do? " 

" I am a gardener — in theory." 

" Unfortunately only facts are shipped on Abel's 
line." 

" Then all is over. For I am just a sheaf of 
theories held together by a cage of bones. There 
is no fact in me at all." 

" Don't be humble. It's waste of time in such a 
humiliating world." 

" I'm not humble " — the gardener indignantly 
repudiated the suggestion. " I'm proud of being 
what I am. I am more than worthy of the Carih- 
beania." 

" Then come and prove it," said Mr. Rust, and 
dragged the gardener passionately down the street. 

The gardener found himself placed on the door- 
step of an aspiring corner house. Mr. Samuel 
Rust stood on a lower step with his back to the door. 
It is part of the code of shadows to pretend, when 
you have rung the bell, that you do not care whether 
the door is opened or not. 

The gardener, following the code of the socially 
simple, stood with his nose nearly touching the 
knocker, and his eyes glued to the spot where the 
head of the servant might be expected to appear. 
It therefore devolved on him to draw Mr. Rust's 
attention to the eventual appearance of a black- 
frocked white-capped answer to his summons. 

" Ah! " exclaimed Samuel, " Mr. Abel in? " 

39 



I POSE 

The maid, with fine dramatic feehng, stepped 
aside, thus opening up a vista, at the end of which 
could be seen Mr. Abel advancing with both hands 
outstretched. 

When people shake hands with both their hands 
and both their eyes and all their teeth, and with 
much writhing of the lips, you at once know some- 
thing fairly important about them. They have ac- 
quired the letter of enthusiasm without its spirit, and 
their effect on the really enthusiastic is like the effect 
of artificial light and heat on a flower that needs the 
sun. 

The gardener became as though he were not there. 
All that he vouchsafed to leave at Mr. Rust's side in 
the library of Mr. Abel was a white and sleepy- 
looking young man, standing on one fourteen-inch 
foot while the other carefully disarranged the car- 
pet edge. The gardener was not shy, though on 
such occasions he looked silly. He was really en- 
crusted in himself; loftily superior to Mr. Abel and 
his like he hung, levitated by the medium of his own 
conceit, at a level far above Mr. Abel's house-top. 

Fortunately Mr. Abel and Mr. Rust both took 
his aloofness for the sheepishness to be expected of 
one of his age. 

" This is the instrument of my designs, and the 

victim of your kindness, Abel," remarked Mr. Rust. 

" He doesn't always look such an ass. He is a 

gardener, by profession." 

40 



I POSE 

" In theory," added the gardener, whose armour 
of aloofness had chinks. There is something prac- 
tical about this inconsistent young man which he has 
never yet succeeded in smothering, and to this day, 
though he poses as being superbly absent-minded, his 
mind is generally present — so to speak — behind 
the door. 

" In theory," repeated Mr. Abel, ecstatically 
amused. He made it his business to shoot promiscu- 
ous appreciation at the conversation of his betters, 
and though his aim was not good, he was at least 
gifted with perseverance. If you shoot enough, you 
must eventually hit something. Hereafter he kept 
his profile agog towards the gardener, a smile hov- 
ering round that side of his mouth in readiness for 
his guest's next sally. 

One pose in which the gardener has never ap- 
proached is that of the wag, and he made renewed 
efforts to unhook his mind from this exasperating 
interview. 

" Is there any opening for a gardener on the 
Caribbeania? " asked Mr. Rust. 

" A gardener . . ." said Mr. Abel, looking la- 
boriously reflective. " We have no gardener as yet 
on board." 

" But is there a garden? " asked Mr. Samuel Rust 
acutely. 

" A garden," repeated Mr. Abel, ruminating in- 
tensely. " There is the winter garden. And a row 

41 



I POSE 

of geraniums on the promenade deck. And some 
trellis work with ivy. Yes, there is certainly a gar- 
den." 

" Then the thing is settled," said Mr. Rust, and 
at these hopeful words the gardener rose loudly 
from his chair. 

" Wait a moment," said Mr. Abel in the same 
voice as the voice in which Important Note is printed 
in the Grammar Book. " What about the salary? " 

There was no reply and no sensation. The gar- 
dener was yearning towards the door. 

" Of course . . ." said Mr. Abel. " The posi- 
tion is not one of any responsibility, and therefore 
could hardly be expected to be a paying one. Your 
passage out . . ." 

" I wouldn't touch money. I hate the feel of it," 
said the gardener abruptly. That threw Mr. Abel 
into a paroxysm of humour. 

On the door-step the gardener did a heroic thing. 
He turned back and found Mr. Abel in the hall, com- 
pletely recovered from his paroxysm. 

" What about " began the gardener, with the 

suffragette in his mind. " Dangerous to lose sight 
of her," he thought. 

"What about what?" asked Mr. Abel, and was 
again very much amused by the symmetry of the 
phrase. He was a bright-mannered man. 

The gardener's new pose lay suddenly clear be- 
fore him. 

" What about my wife? " he asked. 

42 



I POSE 

He was rather pleased with the sensation he made. 

"Your wife?" exclaimed Mr. Rust and Mr. 
Abel in duet (falsetto and tenor). 

" What on earth did you do with her last night? " 
continued Samuel solo. 

" Can't she ship as stewardess?" asked the gar- 
dener. 

Poor suffragette ! But in the eyes of men one 
woman is much the same as another. Every woman, 
I gather, is a potential stewardess. This is woman's 
sphere when it takes to the water. The gardener 
thought he knew all about women. All her virtues 
he considered that she shared with man, but her 
vices he looked upon as peculiarly her own. 

" The boat sails to-morrow," Mr. Abel observed 
reproachfully. " The stewardesses have been en- 
gaged for weeks." 

" Why can't you leave her behind, what? " asked 
Mr. Rust. " Women do far too much travelling 
about nowadays. There's such a thing as broaden- 
ing the mind too far, you know. Sometimes, like 
elastic, it snaps. A lot of women I know have 
snapped." 

" Yes," said the gardener. " But it would be 
better for England if I took her away." 

This spark nearly put an end to the career of 
Mr. Abel. He squeezed the gardener's hand in an 
agony of appreciation. 

" T won't go without her," said the gardener, 
rather surprising himself. He gave Mr. Abel no 

43 



I POSE 

answering smile. He was too busy reproaching him- 
self. 

" Abel," implored Mr. Rust. " I simply can't 
let old Mrs. Paul go without some one to keep the 
Red Place in her line of thought. This is obviously 
the man for the job. My career hangs on you. Be 
worthy. That is — be a sport, now, what? " 

" ril find your wife a berth," said Mr. Abel, 
accompanying each word with a dramatic tap on the 
gardener's arm. " The boat is not full." 

" Settled," exclaimed Mr. Samuel, and after that, 
of course, escape followed. The idea of dinner to- 
gether hovered between the two as they emerged 
into the principal street, but as both were penniless, 
the idea, which originated chiefly in instinct, died. 

The gardener went to call on the suffragette. He 
was conscientious in his own way, and fully realised 
that the woman had a right to know that she was 
now a wife, and, if not a stewardess, an intending 
passenger on a boat bound immediately for the utter- 
most ends of the earth. 

He found the suffragette, looking sad, playing a 
forlorn game of solitaire in forlorn surroundings in 
the little hotel sitting-room. With her hat off she 
looked not so ugly, but more insignificant. Her hair 
seemed as if it would never decide whether to be 
fair or dark until greyness overtook it and settled 
the question. It had been tidied under protest, and 
already strands of it were creeping over her ears, 
like deserters leaving a fortress by stealth. 

44 



I POSE 

The room was papered and ceiled and upholstered 
in drab, there were also drab photographs of un- 
lovable bygones on the walls, and some drab artifi- 
cial flowers in a drab pot on the table. 

There are some colour schemes that kill romance. 
Directly the gardener felt the loveless air of the 
place, he plunged headlong into the cold interview. 
Like a bather who, on feeling the chill of the sea, 
hastens desperately to throw it around him from 
head to foot. 

" I have been telling lies," said the gardener. 

" I have been crying," said the suffragette. 

They each thought that it was thoughtless of the 
other to be so egotistical at this juncture. There 
is nothing that kills an effect so infallibly as a colli- 
sion in conversation. 

" I have been telling lies," said the gardener, 
" about you." 

" I have been crying — about you." 

(These women . . .) 

The gardener took a deep breath, recoiled for a 
start, and ran upon his subject. 

" I have told them that you are my wife, and that 
you are coming with me on the Caribheama, sailing 
to-morrow morning for Trinity Islands." 

" Told who . . . Caribbeania . . . Trinity Is- 
lands . . ." gathered the suffragette, with a wom- 
an's instinct for tripping over the least essential 
point. And then she interviewed herself laboriously 
on the subject. 

45 



I POSE 

There was ample motive for a militant protest, 
and that was a comfortable thought. She was jus- 
tified in throwing any article of the drab furniture 
at the gardener's sharp and doubtful face. This 
creature had put himself in authority over her with- 
out the authority to do so; he had decided to lead 
her to Trinity Islands, whereas her life's work lay 
in England. This cold and curious boy had twisted 
off its hinges the destiny of an independent woman. 
She had hitherto closed the door of her heart against 
to-morrow. She had momentarily liked the idea of 
having a friend who loved the shape of her face, 
especially as he was leaving the country to-morrow. 
The unconventionality of the friendship had crowned 
as an ornament a life of dreadful refinement. She 
had meant to step for a moment from the lonely path, 
and now she found that her way back was barred — 
by this impenetrable trifle. It was infuriating. But 
the suffragette searched in vain for a trace of real 
fury in her heart. She tested the power of words. 

" It Is infuriating," she said. 

" Yes," said the gardener, not apologetically. 
" I quite see that." 

But she did not see it herself — except in theory. 

" All the same," said the gardener, " you are an 
incendiary, not exactly a woman. Can't two friends, 
an incendiary and a horticultural expert, go on a 
voyage of exploration together? Mutual explora- 
tion?" 

" One can be alone in couples," thought the suffra- 

46 



I POSE 

gette. " It would be studying loneliness from a new 
angle. My life has been a lifeless thing, run on the 
world's principles; I shall try a new line, and run it 
on my own principles." 

But, as I may have mentioned, she was a woman, 
so she said: "What is to prevent my going back 
to that house in the woods now, and burning it down 
— if I ever meant to do it? " 

" Me," said the gardener. 

" But you can't sit there with your eyes pinned to 
me until the boat sails." 

" Unless you give me your word as a World's 
Worker that you will not leave the hotel, I shall 
stay here, and so will you." 

For quite a long time the suffragette's upbringing 
wrestled with all comers, but it was a hopeless fight 
from the first. There is no strength in the princi- 
ples created out of a lifeless past. Besides, the 
woman of six-and-twenty was very much flattered 
and fluttered, whatever the militant suffragette might 
be. 

" T will come with you on your exploration tour," 
she said, and her voice sounded like the voice of the 
conqueror rather than the conquered. " I will give 
my word as a — woman without principles that T 
will not leave Southampton except to go on board the 
Caribbeania." 

The gardener left her, he felt innocently drunk. 
He made his way out of the amethyst light of elec- 
tricity, into the golden light of the outskirts of the 

47 



I POSE 

town, and thence into the silver light of the unciv- 
ilised moon. On the beach the tide was receding, 
despite the groping, grasping hands of the sea, which 
contested every inch of the withdrawal. The gar- 
dener stumbled upon the soft solidity of the sand 
above high-water mark, and slept the sleep of the 
thoroughly confused. He dreamt of a pearl-and- 
pink sea, and of unknown islands. 

I need hardly say, after all this preamble, that the 
suffragette and the gardener sailed next day on the 
Caribbeania for Trinity Islands. 

Mr. Samuel Rust, for some time before the boat 
started, was conspicuous for a marked non-appear- 
ance on the wharf's edge. 

The gardener, who had a vague feeling that tears 
should be shed in England on his departure, stood 
feeling a little cold at heart on the starboard side 
of the main deck, looking at the tears that were be- 
ing shed for other people. 

The suffragette, who was under the impression 
that her hand was against all men, stood bleakly on 
the port side, looking at the hydro-aeroplanes leap- 
ing self-consciously about the Solent in seven-league 
boots. She was proud to stand thus aloof and un- 
hampered on the threshold of a novelty. The pride 
she had in her independence was one of her compen- 
sations. This is a world of compensations, and that 
is what makes it the hollow world it is sometimes. 
So seldom do we get the real thing that in this age 

we congratulate ourselves upon our compensations. 

48 



I POSE 

Mr. Samuel Rust made a late and dramatic ap- 
pearance upon the gangway after the first bell of 
preparation for departure had been rung. His hat, 
Inspired by the prevalent aviation craze, blew away. 
But Mr. Rust's thoughts were occupied with other 
things than the Infidelity of hats. He passed the 
gardener without noticing him, and with restrained 
fervour addressed a square elderly woman, who 
stood leisurely on the deck, surrounded by an officious 
maid, like a liner being attended to by a tug. 

Mr. Samuel Rust did not seem like the sort of 
person who would have had a mother. He gave the 
Impression of having been created exactly as he 
stood, with one stroke of the Almighty Finger, and 
not gradually evolved like you or me. You could 
Imagine the gardener, for Instance, at every stage of 
his existence. You could picture those light bright 
eyes under those scowling brows looking out of lace 
and baby-ribbons In a proud nurse's arms. You 
could see him as the fierce little schoolboy, with al- 
ternately too much to say and too little. You could 
Imagine him as an old man, with that thick hair 
turned into a white strong flame upon his head, and 
those already deep-set eyes blazing out of hewn 
hollows above his abrupt cheek-bones. But Mr. 
Samuel Rust seemed to have no past and no fu- 
ture. 

He addressed the woman who, contrary to ap- 
pearances, had played an Important part In the cre- 
ating of him. 

49 



I POSE 

" I couldn't let you go without saying good-bye 
to you, Mrs. Paul," he said. 

" Of course you couldn't," said Mrs. Rust, and 
the words seemed shot by Iron lips from above a 
chin like a ship's ram. 

Something that might have usurped the name of 
a kiss passed between them, and Mr. Samuel hurried 
to the Impatient gangway. As he passed the gar- 
dener he winked earnestly, conscious of his mother's 
eyes on the back of his head. The gardener, feel- 
ing delightfully unscrupulous and roguish, made no 
sign. 

The vulgarly tuneful swan-songs of Cockney emo- 
tion trailed from the deck to the wharf and back 
again. The sound was like thin beaten silver, be- 
coming thinner as the distance Increased. There 
were tears among the women on land, and the shiv- 
ering water blurred the reflections of the crowd until 
they looked as though they were seen through tears. 
The last song fainted in the air, the crowd on the 
wharf ceased to be human, and became a long sug- 
gestion of many colours, a-qulver with waving hand- 
kerchiefs. 

The gardener looked at Mrs. Paul Rust. There 
was a tear following one of the furious furrows that 
bracketed her hyphen of a mouth. 

The south of England Is a land that reluctantly 
lets her deserters go. For full twelve hours she 
stands on tiptoe on the sea-line, beckoning their re- 
turn. 

50 



I POSE 

The gardener watched the land and felt the sea 
for long hours. He felt no regret at having for- 
saken one for the other. For the moment he prided 
himself on heartlessness, or rather on intactness of 
heart, for he had left none of it behind. He was 
proud of the fact that he loved no one in the world. 
He prided himself on his vices more than on his 
virtues. There seems something more unique in 
vice than in virtue. 

The gardener had the convenient sort of memory 
that is fitted with water-tight doors. His mind con- 
ducted a process by which the past was not kept fresh 
and green, nor altogether left behind, but crystallised 
and packed away on shelves in a business-like man- 
ner. He could label it and shut it away without 
emotion. He shut away England now, and rejoiced 
to do so. Poor grey silly England that I am so glad 
to leave and so glad to see again ... 

The gardener turned presently to look for his 
garden, and found — the girl Courtesy. 

Her brilliant and magnetic hair. 

Her broad face with the abrupt flush on the cheeks, 
that was an inartistic accompaniment to the red of 
her hair, and looked as if Nature had become colour- 
blind at the moment of giving Courtesy her com- 
plexion. 

She herself looked herself — simple yet sophisti- 
cated. 

" To think of seeing you here," she said. " Who 
would have thought it." 

51 



I POSE 

The gardener was one of those who are never 
surprised without being thunderstruck. He was 
very thorough in habit, and drank every emotion to 
its dregs. 

His manners fell in ruins about him. His hat 
remained upon his head. His words remained some- 
where beneath his tongue. 

" I got a sudden invitation from a cousin in Trin- 
ity Island," explained Courtesy. " And Dad gave 
me my passage out as a birthday present. I gave 
the threepenny bit to a porter, so I hope you don't 
want it back. Have you kept a halo for me in this 
Paradise? " 

" There is the glassy sea," replied the gardener, 
recovering. " And the halo is just flowering. It 
is exactly the colour of your hair." 

" I hope the sea will be as you say," said Courtesy, 
" for I'm a shockin' bad sailor." 

And at that moment the sea ceased to be totally 
glassy. You could suddenly feel the slow passionate 
heart of the sea beating. 

Courtesy did not look at the change in this poetic 
light at all. She hurried along the deck and disap- 
peared. 

Even if you are a good sailor there is, apart from 
a natural pride in your sailorship, little joy about a 
first day on board. The climate of the English seas 
is not adapted to ocean travel. If I could steam 
straight out of Southampton Harbour into the strong 
yet restrained heat that I love, if I could glide from 

52 



I POSE 

the wharf — mottled with regrets — straight to the 
silver and emerald coasts of a certain land I know, 
where the cocoanut palms lean out over the strip of 
immaculate sand, to see their reflections in the opal 
mirror of the sea, I think I should love the first day 
as much as I love its successors. And yet I would 
not have the voyage shortened by a minute. 

I wonder why nobody has ever brought forward 
as a conclusive Anti-suffrage argument the fact that 
more women are sea-sick than men on the first day 
of a sea-voyage. I can so well imagine the superb 
line the logic of such a contention would take. If 
the basis of life is physical ability, and if physical 
ability depends upon the digestion, then must the 
strong digestion only constitute a right to citizenship. 
To the wall with the weak digestion. 

Mrs. Paul Rust and the suffragette were the only 
women who scaled the heights of the dining saloon 
for that evening's meal. Mrs. Rust looked su- 
premely proud of her immunity from sea-sickness; all 
the men looked laboriously unaware that such a thing 
as sea-sickness existed; the suffragette looked frankly 
miserable. The gardener was obliged to remind 
himself casually from time to time that there was no 
pose that included sea-sickness. 

But any disastrous tendency he might have had to 
give too much thought to his inner man was checked 
by the appearance of Mrs. Paul Rust, the fortress he 
was there to besiege. She was a truly remarkable 
woman to look at. The absence of her hat revealed 

53 



I POSE 

a surprise. Her hair was dyed a forcible crimson. 
And it might have been mud-coloured like mine for 
all the self-consciousness she showed. It was so pro- 
foundly remarkable that for a time one's attention 
was chained to the hair, and one forgot to study the 
impressive general effect, of which the hair was only 
the culminating point. Mrs. Rust's only real 
feature was her chin, but no one ever realised this. 
Her eyes and nose were too small for her face, and 
seemed to fit loosely into that great oval; her mouth 
was only redeemed by the chin that shot from be- 
neath it. Altogether she would have been suf- 
ficiently insignificant-looking had it not been for her 
hair. She proved the truism that the world takes 
people at their own valuation. 

It is always a surprise to me when a truism is 
proved true. I have come across the rock embedded 
in these truisms several times lately to my cost. And 
each time it bruises my knuckles and shocks me. It 
almost makes one wonder whether, after all, the 
ancients occasionally had their flashes of enlighten- 
ment. 

The world thought of Mrs. Paul Rust what she 
thought of herself. It is so often too busy to work 
out its own conclusions. 

Of a modest woman with a heavy jaw, the world 
would have said, " A dear good creature, but dread- 
fully underhung." Of a well-chinned woman with 
dyed hair, it said, " There goes a strong character." 
The hair did it, and the hair was dyed by human 

54 



I POSE 

agency. Providence had no hand in the making of 
Mrs. Rust's forcible reputation. Nowadays we 
leave it to our dressmaker, and our manicurist, and 
our milliner, and our doctor, and our vicar, to make 
us what we are. This is an age of luxury, and it is 
so fatiguing to assert a home-made personality. 
Shall I go to my hairdresser and say, " Here, take 
me, dye me heliotrope. Make an influential woman 
of me"? 

The gardener did not quail before the terrifying 
outer wall of Mrs. Rust's fortress. Believing as he 
did that man makes himself, and that the pose of 
victor is as easy to assume as any other, he was un- 
aware of the reality of the word ' defeat.' Whether 
woman also makes herself, I never fully understood 
from the gardener at this stage. But I gathered 
that woman takes the roles that man rejects. 

The gardener, as a protege of Mr. Abel, who, on 
the Caribbeania, was respected because he was not 
personally known, found himself treated a la junior 
ofl'icer, streaked with a certain flavour of second-class 
passenger, but distinctly suggesting ship's orchestra. 
He was allowed to have his meals in the first- 
class saloon, he was occasionally asked about the 
weather by lady passengers, and the captain and 
officers looked upon him good-naturedly, as a sort of 
example of poetic licence. 

It seemed a good thing when dinner was over. 
One had proved one's courage, and the strain was 
past. The suffragette, who had given a proof rather 

55 



I POSE 

of obstinacy than of courage, retired weakly to her 
cabin. And the gardener stood on deck and looked 
at the sea, while the moon followed the ship's course 
with her eyes. A table companion, an Anglican 
priest, with a weak chin and piercing eyes, came and 
leaned upon the rail at the gardener's side. 

" You smoke? " he asked, and you could hear that 
he was very conventional, and that he believed that 
he was not. 

A man-to-man sort of man. 

" No," said the gardener, and added, " I have no 
vices. 

He said this sort of thing simply to exasperate. 
The pose of indifference to the world's opinion is apt, 
sooner or later, to lead to the pose of wilful pricking 
of the world's good taste. The gardener had a 
morbid craving for unpopularity; It was part of the 
unique pose. Unpopularity Is an excellent salve to 
the conscience ; it Is delicious to be misunderstood. 

The priest did not appear exasperated. He was 
tolerant. The man who aims at unlimited tolerance, 
as a rule, only achieves the absorbent and rather un- 
decided status of spiritual blotting-paper. But he Is 
a dreadfully difficult man to anger. 

I hate talking to people who are occupied in re- 
minding their conscience: " After all this is my sis- 
ter, albeit, a poor relation. I must be tolerant." 
Then they pray for strength, and turn to me, spirit- 
ually renewed, with a brave patient smile. 

This was the priest's pose. 

56 



I POSE 

" You have no vices? " he said, in a slow earnest 
voice. " How I env-y you ! " 

The gardener was more concerned with the varied 
conversation of the sea. Each wave of it flung 
back some magic unspeakable word over Its shoulder 
as It ran by. But he answered the priest: 

" You don't really envy me, you would rather be 
yourself with virtues than me without vices." 

The priest smiled the inscrutable smile of the 
vague-minded. " You have a very original way of 
talking. You interest me. Yerce, yerce. Tell me 
what you were thinking about when I came up." 

The gardener did so at once. Sometimes his im- 
agination weighed heavily upon his mind, and he 
expanded, regardless of his listeners. 

" I was thinking about the things I saw," he said. 
" Things that I often see before I have time to think. 
Snapshots of things that even I have never actually 
imagined. Do you know, wonders crash across my 
eyes like a blow, when I am thinking of something 
else. Ghosts out of my enormous past, I suppose. 
There was a very white beach that I saw just now, 
with opal-coloured waves running along it, and a 
mist whitening the sky. There were very broad red 
men in grey wolf-skins, standing in the water, drag- 
ging dead bodies from the sea. There were little 
children, blue and thin, lying dead upon the beach. 
I know the way children's ribs stand out when they 
are dead. I have never seen a dead child, except 
those . . ." 

57 



I POSE 

" You ought to write fiction, yerce, yerce,'* said 
the priest. " You have a very strong imagination." 

" I have," admitted the gardener. " But not 
strong enough to control these visions that besiege 
me." 

The priest, who had preached more and l^nown 
less about visions than any one else I can think of, 
was constrained to silence. 

Next morning the gardener found his garden. 
He saw it under varied aspects and at varied angles, 
for a gold and silver alternation of sun and shower 
chequered the Atlantic, and inspired the Carihbeania 
to a slow but undignified dance, like the activities of 
a merry cow. The high waves came laughing down 
from the high horizon, and curtseyed mockingly at 
her feet. 

There was a bay tree in a tub on either side of the 
entrance to the garden, and the gardener, as he stood 
between them, surveying his territory, slid involun- 
tarily from one to the other and back again, as the 
world wallowed. The garden was conventionally 
conceived, by a carpenter rather than a gardener. 
Grass-green trellis-work, which should belong essen- 
tially to the background, here usurped undue promi- 
nence. Arches in the trellis-work, looking to the 
sea, gave bizarre views, now of the heavy hurried 
sky, now of the panting sea. Hanging drunkenly 
from the apex of each arch was a chained wicker 
basket, from which sea-sick canariensis waved weak 
protesting hands. A few creepers, lacking sufficient 

58 



I POSE 

initiative for the task set before them, clawed 
incompetently at the lowest rungs of the trellis. A 
row of geraniums in pots shouted in loud brick-red 
at the farther and more sheltered end of the garden. 
It was impossible to tolerate the thought of Hilda 
associating with those geraniums. She was a very 
vulnerable and emotional soul, was Hilda. Deep 
orange is a colour beyond the comprehension of the 
vermilion and vulgar. A few sodden-looking deck- 
chairs occupied the gardener's territory, and repelled 
advances. But on the farthest sat the suffragette. 
She was crying. 

If you have ever crossed the Bay of Biscay while 
weakened by emotion, you will not ask why she was 
crying. 

The gardener dropped his pose between the bay 
trees, and did something extraordinarily pretty, con- 
sidering the man he was. He sat on the next deck- 
chair to hers, and patted her knee. 

♦' My fault . . ." he said. " My fault . . ." 

Of course he did not really believe that it was his 
fault, but it was unusually gracious of him to tell the 
lie. 

The suffragette turned her face from him. She 
had cried away all her vanity. Her hair was lament- 
able, her small plain eyes were smaller than ever, 
and her nose was the only pink thing in her face. 

" I'm very morbid," she said. " And that at any 
rate is not your fault." 

" Don't let's think either about you or me," said 

59 



I POSE 

the gardener, and it would have been wise had he 
meant it, " We have all our lives to do that in, 
and it is a pity to do it in the Bay. When one's feel- 
ing weak, it's easier to fight the world than to fight 
oneself." 

The suffragette was a grey thing, a snake-soul. 
To the eye of a grey soul there is something forbid- 
ding about the many colours of the universe, and you 
will always know snake-people by their defensive at- 
titude. It is an immensely lonely thing to be a snake, 
to have that tortuous spirit, with no limbs for con- 
tact with the earth. And yet the compensation is 
most generous, for there are few joys like the joy of 
knowing yourself alone. 

In cubes of blue, in curves of mauve, 

They spotted up my firmament; 

And with my sharp grey heart I strove 

To stab the colours as they went. 

" Lou-/fl . . ." they said — " Lou-la, a thing 

At war without a following." 

" Lou-/a . . ." they cried — and now cry I — 

" At war without an enemy . . ." 

" I can't think how you dare to speak out your 
imagination," said the suffragette. " Most people 
hide it like a sin." 

He was always willing to be the text of his own 
oratory. 

" Imagination is my Genesis, and my Book of 

Revelations," he answered. " There is nothing with 

more power. It is stronger than faith, for it can 

60 



I POSE 

really move mountains. It has moved mountains, it 
has moved England from my path and left me this 
clear sea." 

The suffragette walled herself more securely in. 
" I have no imagination at all," she lied, and then 
she added some truth: "I am very unhappy and 
lonely." 

" The other day . . ." said the gardener, " you 
were happy to be independent and alone." 

" That's why I'm now unhappy to be independent 
and alone. You can't discover the heaven in a thing 
without also tripping over the hell. I like a black 
and white life." 

" Don't think," said the gardener suddenly, and 
almost turned the patting of her knee into a slap. 
" It's a thing that should only be done in moderation. 
Some day you won't be able to control your craving 
for thought, and then you'll die of Delirium Tre- 
mens." 

" It's not such a dangerous drug as some," smiled 
the suffragette. " I'd rather have that craving than 
the drink craving, or the society craving, or the love 
craving." 

" Better to have nothing you can't control." 

" You hypocrite ! You can't control your imag- 
ination," 

" You're right," said the gardener after a pause. 
He was a curiously honest opponent in argument. 
Besides, she had stopped crying, and there was no 
special reason for continuing the discussion. Also 

6i 



I POSE 

Mrs. Paul Rust at that moment appeared between 
the bay trees. 

Mrs. Rust's hair looked vicious in a garden, beside 
the geraniums, which were at least sincere in colour, 
however blatant. 

" Is this private? " she asked. There was some- 
thing in the shy look of the garden, and in the re- 
proachful look of the gardener, that made the ques- 
tion natural. 

" No," said the gardener. " This is the ship's 
garden." 

" Good," said Mrs. Paul Rust. 

She always said " good " to everything she had not 
heard before. To her the newest was of necessity 
the best. Originality was her ideal, and as unattain- 
able as most ideals are. For she was not in the least 
original herself. She was doomed for ever to stand 
outside the door of her temple. And " good " was 
her tribute of recognition to those who had free 
passes into the temple. It owned that they had 
shown her something that she would never have 
thought of for herself. For nothing had ever 
sprung uniquely from her. Even in her son she 
could only claim half the copyright. 

The suffragette tried to rearrange her looks, which 
certainly needed it. There are two sorts of women, 
the women before whom you feel you must be tidy 
and the women before whom such things don't mat- 
ter. Mrs. Rust all her life had belonged to the for- 

62 



I POSE 

mer, all her life what charm she had, had lain in the 
terror she inspired. 

For the first time the gardener questioned himself 
as to his plan of attack. Hitherto he had pinned his 
faith to inspiration. He had left the matter in the 
hands of his private god, Chance. His methods 
were very simple, as well as bizarre. His mind was 
a tortuous path, but he followed it straightforwardly, 
and never looked back. To do him justice, however, 
I must say that he searched his repertoire for a suit- 
able point of conversational contact with Mrs. Rust. 
Finding none, he dispensed with that luxury. 

" I am the ship's gardener," he said, smiling at his 
intended victim. 

Mrs. Rust was broad, and the deck-chair was nar- 
row. It was some time before a compromise be- 
tween these two facts could be arrived at, so the 
remark came upon her at a moment of some stress. 

" Now, then, what was that you were saying? " 
she asked at last, in an unpromising voice. 

The gardener, who was very literal in very small 
things, repeated his information, word for word, 
and inflection for inflection. " I am the ship's gar- 
dener." 

Mrs. Rust grunted. She showed no tolerance for 
the thing that was not sensational. Nor had she 
any discrimination in her search for the novelty. 
Still, energy is something. 

" But I am only ship's gardener in theory," per- 

63 



I POSE 

sisted the gardener. " In practice I don't even know 
where the watering-can is kept." 

" Then you are here under false pretences," re- 
torted Mrs. Rust a little more genially, for his last 
remark was not everybody's remark. 

" I am," said the gardener, suddenly catching a 
fleeting perspective of the path to her good graces. 

" Good," said Mrs. Rust, and turned her little 
bright eyes upon him. 

When she opened her eyes very wide, It meant that 
she was on the track of what she sought. When she 
shut them, as she often did, it meant that she did not 
understand what was said. But it gave the fortu- 
nate impression that she understood only too well. 
She was instinctively ingenious at hiding her own 
limitations. 

It was the end of that Interview, but a good begin- 
ning to the campaign. 

The sea to some extent recovered its temper 
within that day. Towards the evening, when slate 
and silver clouds, with their backs to the Carih- 
beania, were racing to be the first over the horizon, 
the garden was invaded by passengers, racing to be 
the first over the boundary of sea-sickness. The si- 
lence of the unintroduced at first lay, like a pall, 
along the deck-chairs, but a mutual friend was 
quickly found in Mothersill, whose excellent inven- 
tion was represented in every work-bag. The bright 
noise of women discussing suffering rippled along the 

garden. Abuse of the Caribbeania's stewardesses 

64 



I POSE 

sprang from lip to lip. It was a pretty scene, and 
the gardener turned his back on It, and went below 
to water Hilda. 

The gardener's cabin, which was impertinently 
shared by a couple of inferior souls, was as square as 
a box, and furnished with nautical economy. The 
outlook from its porthole was as varied in character 
as it was limited in size. At one moment one felt 
oneself the drunken brain behind the round eye of a 
giant, staring into green and white obscurity; at 
another one blinked, as a mist of spray like shivered 
opal spun up over one's universe; again one enjoyed 
an instantaneous glimpse of the flat chequered floor 
of the Atlantic; and at rare intervals the curtain of 
the sky slid over the porthole, and the setting sun 
dropped across the eye like a rocket. 

Hilda sat wistfully on the recess of the porthole, 
leaning her forehead against the glass. She had a 
bud, chosen to match Courtesy's hair. Just as 
Hilda's stalk was necessary to hold her bud upright, 
so Courtesy herself was necessary to support the con- 
flagration of her hair on the level of the onlooker's 
eye. Both were necessities, and both were artis- 
tically negligible. 

The gardener looked around the cabin. There is 
something depressing about other people's clothes. 
There Is something depressing In an incessant attack 
on one's skull by Inanimate objects. There Is some- 
thing depressing In a feeling of Incurable drunken- 
ness unrelieved by the guilty gaiety that usually ac- 

65 



I POSE 

companies such a condition. There is something 
depressing about ocean life below decks at any time. 
The gardener and Hilda sat in despair upon the hard- 
hearted thing that sea-going optimists accept as a 
bed. 

" Of course I don't want to go home," the gar- 
dener told himself. 

Hilda, poor golden thing of the soil, had no doubts 
as to what she was suffering from. But the gardener 
wondered why despair had seized him. Until he 
remembered that the spirit of the sea walks on deck 
alone, and is never permitted by the stewards to' enter 
the cabins. He climbed the companion-way, like a 
tired angel returning to heaven after a stuffy day on 
earth. He came upon Courtesy making a bad shot 
at the door that leads to the Promenade deck. 

" Come and sit in the garden," he said in a re- 
freshed voice. 

On deck, a few enterprising spirits were playing 
deck quoits against the elements. The general 
geniality whose rule only lasts for the first three days 
of a voyage was reigning supreme. Young men 
were making advances to young ladies with whom 
they would certainly quarrel in forty-eight hours' 
time, and young ladies were mocking behind their 
hands at the young men they would be engaged to 
before land was reached. The priest, with an ap- 
pearance of sugared condescension, was showering 
missiles upon the Bullboard as though they were 
blessings. (And they were misdirected.) The in- 

66 



I POSE 

evitable gentleman who has crossed the Atlantic 
thirty times and can play all known games with fa- 
tiguing perfection, was straining like a greyhound on 
the leash towards the quoits which mere amateurs 
were usurping. Captain Walters, who has a twin 
brother on every liner that ever sailed, was brightly 
collecting signatures for a petition to the Captain 
concerning a dance that very evening. 

The gardener, with unusual cordiality, gave the 
reeling Courtesy his arm, as they threaded the maze 
of amusements towards the garden. 

There was only one deck-chair unoccupied. It 
was labelled loudly as belonging to some one else, but 
Courtesy, always bold, even when physically weakest, 
advanced straight upon it. It was next to the suffra- 
gette's. And the gardener became for the first time 
aware of a cat in a bag, and of the fact that the cat 
was about to emerge. 

The suffragette was the sort of person next to 
whom empty chairs are always to be found. She 
had plenty to say, and what she said was often rather 
amusing, but it was always a little too much to the 
point, and the point was a little too sharp. She had 
a certain amount of small talk, but no tiny talk. She 
was not so much ignored as avoided. She had alto- 
gether missed youth, and its glorious power of being 
amused by what is not, correctly speaking, amusing. 
Her generation thought her " brainy," it was very 
polite to her. Do you know the terrible sensation of 
being invariably the last to be chosen at Nuts in 

67 



I POSE 

May? This was the suffragette's atmosphere. My 
poor suffragette! It is so much more difficult to 
bear the snub than the insult. Insult is like a 
bludgeon thrown at the inflated balloon of our con- 
ceit. With the very blunt force of it we rebound. 
But the snub is a pin-prick, which lets our supporting 
pride out, and leaves us numb and nothing. I al- 
ways feel the insult is founded on passion, while the 
snub springs from innate dislike. 

" May I introduce Miss Courtesy Briggs . . ." 
began the gardener, hoping for an inspiration be- 
fore the end of the sentence. " Miss Courtesy 
Briggs ..." 

Both women looked expectant. 

" Miss Courtesy Briggs . . . my wife." 

" O Lor' ! " said Courtesy, and then, with her 
healthy regard for conventions, remembered that this 
was not the proper retort to an introduction. 

" When you left Penny Street, a week ago . . ." 
she said to the gardener, as she shook the suffra- 
gette's hand, " you didn't tell me you were engaged." 

" I wasn't," said the gardener. 

Courtesy dropped the subject, because it was 
hardly possible to continue it. She was not the girl 
to do what was conventionally impossible. Besides 
the bugle was sounding to show that dinner was 
within hailing distance. Courtesy was a slave of 
time. Her day was punctuated by the strokes of 
clocks. Her life was a thing of pigeon-holes, and if 
some of the pigeon-holes were empty they were all 

68 



I POSE 

neatly labelled. She was the sort of person who 
systematically allowed ten minutes every morning for 
her prayers, and during that time, with the best inten- 
tions, mused upon her knees about the little things of 
yesterday. It is a bold woman that would squeeze 
Heaven into a pigeon-hole. 

Theresa stopped in front of the gardener's chair. 
Theresa's surname had been blown away from her 
with the first Atlantic wind. So had the shining sys- 
tem in her yellow hair. So had most of her land con- 
ventions. She was not a thing of the ocean, but a 
thing of the ocean liner. She had immediately be- 
come Everybody's Theresa. I could not say that 
everybody loved Theresa, but I know that everybody 
felt they ought to. 

" Captain said no dance this evening," said 
Theresa, in her telegraphic style. " Too much sea 
on. Doctor said broken legs. But I went and 
wheedled. Called the Captain Sweet William. 
Dance at nine." 

The dance was at nine. There were no limits to 
what Theresa could do — in her sphere. 

A proud quartermaster was superintending the last 
touches of chalk upon the deck, when the gardener 
and the suffragette led the exodus from the dining- 
saloon. 

In Paradise I hope T shall be allowed a furious 
walk around a windy rocking deck at frequent inter- 
vals throughout eternity. I know of nothing more 
poetic, and yet more brilliantly prosaic. At such 

69 



I POSE 

moments you can feel the muscles of life trembling 
by reason of sheer strength. 

The suffragette and the gardener walked so fast 
that the smoke from the suffragette's cigarette lay 
out along the wind like the smoke behind a railway 
train. The strong swing of the sea threw their feet 
along. There was a moon in the sky and phos- 
phorus in the sea. 

But there are people who go down to the sea in 
ships, and yet confine their world to the promenade- 
deck. The heart of Theresa's world, for instance, 
was the shining parallelogram, silvered with chalk, 
on the sheltered side of the deck. Theresa, looking 
extremely pretty, was superintending the over-filling 
of her already full programme. 

" Mustn't walk round like that," she said in the 
polite tones that The Generation always used to the 
suffragette. *' Must find partners, because the or- 
chestra will soon begin to orch." 

" We are not dancing," said the gardener. One 
always took for granted that the suffragette was not 
dancing. 

" If you will dance," said Theresa, " I will give 
you number eight." She assumed with such confi- 
dence that this was an inducement, that somehow it 
became one. 

" Thank you very much," replied the gardener. 
*' I'll ask Courtesy Briggs for one, too." 

The suffragette sat down upon an isolated chair. 

"May I have a dance?" asked the gardener of 

70 



I POSE 

Courtesy. " I can't dart or stagger, only revolve." 

" I was sea-sick only three hours ago," retorted 
Courtesy with simplicity. " But I have a lot to talk 
to you about, so you can have number one. And 
we'll begin it now." 

But the orchestra was still idling in the melancholy 
manner peculiar to orchestras. Why — by the way 
— is there something so unutterably sad in the ex- 
pression of an orchestra about to play a jovial one- 
step? 

" I do want to know about your marriage," pur- 
sued Courtesy, whose curiosity was a daylight trait, 
like the rest of her characteristics. " When did it 
happen, and where did you meet her, and why did 
you have a wedding without me to help? " 

" I met her — on the way to Paradise," said the 
gardener, posing luxuriously as an enigma. " We 
got married on the way too. It was a no-flowers-by- 
request sort of wedding, otherwise we would have 
invited you." 

" But I can't understand it," said Courtesy. 
" Only a week ago you were snivelling over a broken 
bootlace." 

The gardener's pose had a fall. He might have 
expected that Courtesy would trip it up. 

The violins, relieving their feelings by a prelim- 
inary concerted yell, settled down to a lamentation in 
ragtime. 

The gardener danced rather well, as his mother 
had taught him to dance. Courtesy danced rather 

71 



I POSE 

well, after the manner of The Generation. But the 
Caribbeania danced better than either. She reduced 
them to planting their four feet wide and sliding up 
and down. The ship's officers, with their lucky part- 
ners, leaning to the undulations of the deck, like wil- 
lows bending to the wind, showed to immense ad- 
vantage. They evidently knew every wave of the 
Atlantic by heart. But among the remaining 
dancers there was much unrest. Captain Walters, 
who was accustomed to be one of the principal orna- 
ments of a more stationary ballroom, at once 
knocked his partner down and sat upon her. 
Theresa and a subaltern slid helplessly at the mercy 
of the elements into a forest of chaperons. The 
gardener and Courtesy leaned together and clung, 
with a tense look on their faces. 

I dare not say what angle the deck had reached 
when the orchestra, with an unpremeditated lapse 
into a Futurist style of melody, broke loose, and 
glided in a heaving phalanx to join the turmoil. 
The piano, being lashed to its post, remained a tri- 
umphant survivor, calmly surveying the fallen estate 
of the less stable instruments. 

" I am not enjoying myself a bit," said Courtesy, 
as she disentangled a violin from her hair, and 
strove to dislodge the 'celloist from his position on 
her lap. The gardener disliked agreeing with any 
one, but he seemed by no means anxious to continue 
dancing. The orchestra also seemed a little loth to 

72 



I POSE 

risk its dignity again at once, and even Theresa, 
though still plastered with a pink smile, was retiring 
on the arm of her subaltern to a twilit deck-chair. 

In the distance, among her rows of empty chairs, 
the suffragette was smiling. She had watched the 
dancing with that half-ashamed sort of amusemeat 
which some of us feel when we see others making 
fools of themselves. And because she smiled, the 
priest came and sat beside her. He considered him- 
self a temporary shepherd in charge of this maritime 
flock, and you could see In his eye the craving for 
souls to save. He had hardly noticed the suffragette 
until her smile caught his eye, but directly he did 
notice her he saw that she was not among the saved. 
He therefore approached her with the smile he re- 
served for the wicked. 

" Very amusing, is it not? " he said. 

Now the suffragette liked to see the young busy 
with their youth, but because she was a snake she 
could not bear to say so. Especially in answer to 
*' Very amusing, is it not? " 

So she said, " Is it? " and Immediately cursed her- 
self for the inhuman remark. Some people's hu- 
manity takes this tardy form of hidden self-reproach 
after expression, and then it strikes inward, like 
measles. 

" Well, that's as it may be, yerce, yerce," said the 
priest, who was so tolerant that he had no opinions of 
his own, and had hardly ever been guilty of contra- 

73 



I POSE 

diction. "That is your husband, is it not?" he 
added, as the gardener extricated himself from the 
knot of fallen dancers. 

The suffragette actually hesitated, and then she 
said, " Yes," and narrowly escaped adding, " More 
or less." 

" A most interesting young man," said the priest, 
who, with the keen eye of the saver of souls, had no- 
ticed the hesitation. 

" Naturally he interests me," said the suffragette. 

" He is so original," continued the priest. " Even 
his occupation strikes one as original. A gardener 
on an ocean liner. The march of science, yerce, 
yerce. Most quaint. I suppose you also are inter- 
ested in Nature. I always think the care of flowers 
is an eminently suitable occupation for ladies." 

" Perhaps," she admitted. " But I am not a lady. 
I am a militant suffragette." 

The priest's smile changed from the saintly to the 
roguish. " Have you any bombs or hatchets con- 
cealed about you? " he asked. 

" I wish I had," she replied. I fully admit that 
her manners were not her strong point. But the 
priest persisted. He noted the absence of any 
answering roguishness, and recorded the fact that she 
had no sense of humour. True to his plastic nature, 
however, he said, " Of course I am only too well 
aware of the justice of many of women's demands, 
yerce, yerce. But you, my dear young lady, you are 
as yet on the threshold of life ; it is written plain upon 

74 



I POSE 

your face that you have not yet come into contact 
with the reahties of life." 

" In that case it's a misprint," said the suffragette. 
" I am twenty-six." 

" Twenty-six," repeated the priest. " I wonder 
why you are bitter — at twenty-six? " 

" Because I have taken some trouble not to be 
sweet," she said. " Because I was not born blind." 

As a matter of fact she had been born morally 
short-sighted. She had never seen the distant de- 
light of the world at all. 

The priest did not believe in anything approaching 
metaphor. He considered himself to be too manly. 
So he deflected the course of the conversation. 
" And your husband. What are his views on the 
Great Question?" (A slight relapse into roguish- 
ness on the last two words.) 

" I have never asked him. I know he does not 
believe in concrete arguments from women. 
Though he approves of them from men." She fin- 
gered a bruise on her arm. 

" The arguments about women's lack of physical 
force are the most incontrovertible ones your cause 
has to contend with," said the priest. " Say what 
you will, physical force is the basis of life." 

" I think it is a confession of weakness." 

" There is something in what you say," said the 
priest. He did not really think there was, for he 
had taken no steps to investigate. He was busy 
thinking that this was an odd wife who did not know 

75 



I POSE 

her husband's views on a question that obsessed her 
own thoughts. 

The gardener had by now extracted Courtesy 
from the tangle, and was steering her towards a 
chair. 

" Your husband appears to know that young lady 
with the auburn hair," said the priest. " He knew 
her before he came on board, did he not? " 

" Apparently he did," said the suffragette. " I 
didn't." 

She was providing him with so many clues that he 
was fairly skimming along on the track of his prey. 
When he left her he felt like a collector who has 
found a promising specimen. 

" Altogether on the wrong lines," he told himself, 
and added, " Poor lost lamb, how much she needs a 
helping hand " ; not because he felt sorry for her, but 
because word-pity was the chief part of his stock-in- 
trade. 

Next morning the Caribheania had flung the winds 
and waves behind her, and had settled down to a 
passionless career along a silver sea under a silver 
sky, — like man, slipping out of the tumioll of youth 
Into the excellent anti-climax of middle life. 

Similes apart, however, the Caribheania was now 
so steady that an Infant could have danced a jig upon 
her deck. Several Infants tried. Amusements 
rushed upon her passengers from every side. A 
week passed Hke a wink. Hardly were you awake 
In the morning before you found yourself pursuing 

76 



I POSE 

an egg round your own ankles with a teaspoon. 
Sports and rumours of sports followed you even unto 
your nightly bunk. Everybody developed talents 
hitherto successfully concealed in napkins. Courtesy 
found her life's vocation in dropping potatoes into 
buckets. She brought this homely pursuit to a very 
subtle art, and felt that she had not lived in vain. 
Not that she ever suffered from morbid illusions as 
to her value. The gardener brought to light a latent 
gift for sitting astride upon a spar while other men 
tried with bolsters to remove him. The suffragette, 
when nobody was looking, acquired proficiency in the 
art of shuffling the board. When observed, she in- 
stinctively donned an appearance of contempt. Mrs. 
Paul Rust settled herself immovably in a chair and 
applauded solo at the moments when others were not 
applauding. The priest, looking in an opposite di- 
rection, clapped when he heard other hands being 
clapped, in order to show the kind interest he took in 
mundane affairs. 

While occupied thus, one day, he found himself 
next to Courtesy. That determined lady had her 
back to a Whisky and Soda Race then in progress, 
and looked aggrieved. She had been beaten in the 
first heat, whereas she was convinced that victory had 
been her due. Courtesy suffered from all the faults 
that you and I — poetic souls — cannot love. She 
was greedy. She was fat. She could not even lose 
a race without suspecting the timekeeper of corrup- 
tion. All the same, there was something so entirely 

77 



I POSE 

healthy and human about her, that nobody had ever 
pointed out to her her lack of poetry, and of the 
more subtle virtues. 

The priest, who had also never been able to lose a 
game without losing his temper too, sympathised 
with Courtesy, and employed laborious tact in trying 
to lead her thoughts elsewhere. 

" Trinity Islands are your destination, are they 
not, yerce, yerce? " he said. 

" Yes," replied Courtesy. " And I wish this old 
tub would buck up and get there." 

" You have reasons of your own for being very 
anxious to arrive?" suggested the priest archly. 

" Nothing special that I know of," answered 
Courtesy. " I'm only an ordinary globe-trotter." 

Frankly, she was being sent out to get married. 
But this, of course, was among the things that are 
not said. Her father had become tired of support- 
ing a daughter as determined to study art In London 
as she was Incapable of succeeding at It. He had 
accepted for her a casual invitation from a cousin 
for a season in the Trinity Islands. The invitation 
was so very casual that Courtesy had appreciated the 
whole scheme as a matrimonial straw clutched at by 
an over-daughtered parent. But her feelings were 
not hurt. She had bluff, tough feelings. 

" How curious that you should have found former 
friends on board!" said the priest. "How small 
the world is, Is It not? " 

"Yes, isn't It?" assented Courtesy, whose heart 

78 



I POSE 

always warmed towards familiar phrases. " And so 
odd, too, him being married within the week like 
this." 

The priest pricked up his ears so sharply that you 
could almost hear them click. " So quickly as 
that? " he encouraged her. 

" Yes, when he left the private hotel where he and 
I were both staying just over a fortnight ago, he was 
not even engaged. He says such quaint things about 
it, too. He says he picked her up on the way to 
Paradise." 

The mention of Paradise confirmed the priest's 
worst suspicions. But " Yerce, yerce . . ." was his 
only reply to Courtesy. 

Late that night the priest walked round and round 
the deck trying to peer into the face of his god, pro- 
fessional duty. His conscience was as short-sighted 
as some people's eyes, and he was often known to 
pursue a shadow under the impression that he was 
pursuing his duty. 

" Of course I must warn the Captain," he said. 
" And that bright young lady who unconsciously gave 
me the news. And Mrs. Rust, who encourages that 
misguided young man to talk. And Mrs. Cyrus 
Berry, who lets her children play with him. As for 
the woman — I always think that women are the 
most to blame in such cases." 

Although he was altogether narrow his limits were 
indefinite, except under great provocation. He 
had not strength enough to draw the line anywhere. 

79 



I POSE 

" Wicked " was too big a word for him ; and although 
he beheved that the gardener and the suffragette 
were In immediate danger of hell-fire, he could only 
call them " misguided." This applies to him only in 
his capacity as a priest. In his own Interests he was 
very much more sensitive than he was In the interest 
of his God. 

Sometimes I think that angels, grown old, turn 
into enemies to trap the unwary. The angel of tol- 
erance was the great saviour of history, but now he 
saps the strength of every cause. Either I Am 
Right, or I May Possibly Be Right. If I may only 
possibly be right, why should I dream of burning at 
the stake for such a very illusory proposition? But 
if I am right, then my enemy Is Wrong, and Is In 
danger of hell-fire. That Is my theory. My prac- 
tice is to believe that belief Is everything, and that I 
may worship a Jove or a stone with advantage to my 
soul. Belief Is everything, and I believe. But if 
my enemy believes in nothing, then I will condemn 
him. Why should I be tolerant of what I am con- 
vinced is wrong? 

The priest, In the dark, found some one clinging 
round his knees. A woman — a little woman — 
wrapped so tightly in a cloak that she looked like a 
mummy. Her face was grey, and her lips looked 
dark. Her hair lay dank and low upon her brow, 
and yet seemed as If it should have been wildly on 
end about her head. The whole of her looked hor- 
ribly restrained — bound with chains — and her 

80 



I POSE 

eyes, which should have givxn the key to the entreaty 
which she embodied, were tightly shut. For five 
seconds the priest tried to run away. But she held 
him round the knees and cried, " Save me, save me ! " 

Nobody had ever come to the priest with such a 
preposterous request before. 

" Let me go, my good woman," he said, audibly 
keeping his head. " Be calm, let me beg you to be 
calm." 

She let him go. But she was not calm. 

It was very late, and the deck-chairs had been 
folded up and stacked. As the woman would not 
rise to the priest's level, he saw nothing for it but 
to sink to hers. They sat upon the deck side by side. 
He felt that it was not dignified, but there was no- 
body looking. And otherwise, he began to feel in 
his element. Here was a soul literally shrieking to 
be saved. 

" What Is It? Tell me. You have sinned? " he 
asked. 

" Certainly not," replied the woman in a hard thin 
voice. " I have never deserved what I've got. It 
seems to me that it's God who has sinned." 

" Hush, be calm," the priest jerked out. " Be 
calm and tell me what has upset you so much." 

The woman began to laugh. Her laughter was 
absurdly impossible, like frozen fire. It lasted for 
some time, and the world seemed to wait on tiptoe 
for it to stop. It was too much for the priest's 
nerves, and for his own sake he gripped her arm to 

8i 



I POSE 

make her stop. She was silent at once. The grip 
had been what she needed. 

'* Now tell me," said the priest. 

She paused a little while, and seemed trying to 
swallow her hysteria. When she spoke it was in a 
sane, though trembling voice. " I am not Church of 
England, sir, but you being a man of God, so to 
speak, I thought ... I am suffering — terribly. 
There's something gnawing at my breast . . . I've 
prayed to God, sir; I've prayed until I've fainted 
with the pain of kneeling upright. But he never 
took no notice. I think he's mistaken me for a 
damned soul . . . before my time. Why, I could 
see God smiling, I could, and the pain grew worse. 
I've been a good woman in my time; I've done my 
duty. But God smiled to see me hurt. So I prayed 
to the Devil — I'd never have believed it three 
months ago. I prayed for hell-fire rather than this. 
The pain grew worse . . ." 

" Have you seen the doctor?" 

" Oh, yes. And he said the sea-voyage would do 
me good. He couldn't do nothing." 

" Poor soul ! " said the priest, and found to his 
surprise that he was inadequate to the occasion. 
" Poor soul, what can I say? It is, alas, woman's 
part to suffer in this world. Your reward is in 
heaven. You must pin your faith still to the efficacy 
of prayer. You cannot have prayed in the right 
spirit." 

" But what a God — what a God . . ." shouted 

82 



I POSE 

the woman with a wild cry. " To hide himself in a 
maze — and me too distracted to find out the way. 
Why, my tears ought to reach him, let alone my pray- 
ers. I've sacrificed so much for him — and he gives 
me over to this . . ." 

" This is terrible, yerce terrible," said the priest. 
" My poor creature, this is not the right spirit in 
which to meet adversity. Put yourself in God's 
hands, like a little child . . ." 

The woman dragged herself suddenly a yard or 
two from him. " Oh, you talker — you talker . . ." 
she cried, and writhed upon the deck. 

" Listen," said the priest in a commanding voice. 
" Kneel with me now, and pray to God. When we 
have prayed, I will take you to the doctor, and he will 
give you something to make you sleep." 

" I won't touch drugs," said the woman. " And 
I don't hold with that young doctor in brass buttons. 
If I pray now with you, will you promise that I shall 
be better in the morning? " 

" Yes," said the priest. It was spoken, not out 
of his faith, but because that seemed the only way to 
put an end to the scene. And when he prayed, in a 
musical clerical voice, he prayed not out of his heart, 
but out of his sense of what was fitting. 

The stars bent their wise eyes upon the wise sea 
and bore witness that the priest's prayer never 
reached heaven's gate. 

"Now you feel better, do you not?" he asked, 
when he had said all that had occurred to him, and 

83 



I POSE 

Intoned a loud Amen, as if to give the prayer an up- 
ward impetus. 

" No,'" sobbed the woman. 

" Who are you? What is your name? " 

" I am Ehzabeth Hammer, Mrs. Rust's maid," 
she replied, and staggered in a lost way into the dark- 
ness of the companionway. 

" To-morrow it will be better," the priest called 
after her. And wished that he could think so. 

The world smiled next morning, when the sports 
began again. Elizabeth Hammer was invisible, 
probably concealed in some lowly place suitable to 
her position. The sea was silver, the sky blazed 
blue, the sun smiled from its height, like a father 
beaming upon his irresponsible family. Mrs. Paul 
Rust looked incredible in a pale dress, designed for 
peculiarity rather than grace; pink roses sprigged it 
so sparsely as to give the impression of birth-mark 
afflictions rather than decorations. I am not sure 
whether the feather in her hat was more like an ex- 
plosion or a palm tree. The gardener rolled upon a 
deck-chair with three children using him as a switch- 
back railway. Theresa was smiling from her top 
curl down to her toes. Even the suffragette was 
talking about the transmigration of souls to the 
fourth officer. Everything on the surface was highly 
satisfactory, and, on board ship, nothing except the 
surface matters a bit. 

The priest had a leaky mind. He never poured 
out all that was in it, but he could not help letting a 

84 



I POSE 

certain proportion of its contents escape. He 
paused in his daily walk of thirty times round the 
deck, and found a seat beside Mrs. Paul Rust. 

" Your maid seems to be in a shocking state of 
health," he said. 

" She suffers from indigestion," replied Mrs. Rust. 
" Some fool of a doctor has told her that she has can- 
cer. She has quite lost her head over it." 

" At any rate she appears to be in great pain," 
said the priest, who considered that indigestion was 
rather too unclothed a word for ordinary use. 
" And pain is a terrible thing, is it not? " 

" No," said Mrs. Rust. 

" You mean that you consider it salubrious for the 
soul?" 

" No," said Mrs. Rust. 

" Then I wonder in what way you consider pain 
desirable?" 

Mrs. Rust, who had meant nothing beyond contra- 
diction, shut her eyes and looked immovably subtle. 
The priest changed the subject. He had a real gift 
for changing the subject. 

" Have you made the acquaintance of that dark 
young man who acts as the ship's gardener?" he 
asked. 

" An excellent young man," said Mrs. Rust, imme- 
diately divining that the priest did not approve of 
him. 

" Yerce, yerce, no doubt an excellent young man," 
agreed the priest mechanically. " But I have reason 

85 



I POSE 

to believe that his morals are not satisfactory." 

" Good," said Mrs. Rust. 

" I do not think he is really married to that aggres- 
sive young woman he calls his wife." 

" Good," said Mrs. Rust. She did not approve 
of such irregularities any more than the priest did, 
but she disapproved of disapprobation. 

The priest, being constitutionally incapable of ar- 
gument, and yet unable to broaden his view, was left 
wordless. But an interruption mercifully rescued 
him from the necessity of attempting a reply. 

Elizabeth Hammer, Mrs. Rust's maid, appeared 
at the companion door. Her eyes were fixed hun- 
grily upon the sea. 

There was a race about to be run, and the starter 
stood ready to say the word. But Elizabeth Ham- 
mer brushed past him and walked across the empty 
strip of deck. She climbed the rail as though she 
were walking upstairs, and dropped into the 
sea. 

" Hammer," barked Mrs. Rust hoarsely, as she 
heard the splash. That word broke the spell. A 
woman shrieked, and Captain Walters shouted, 
" Man Overboard." 

The suffragette was not a heroine. What she did 
was undignified and unconscious. The heroine 
should remove her coat, hand her watch to a friend, 
send her love to a few relations, and bound grace- 
fully into the water. The suffragette, fully clothed, 
tumbled upside down after Elizabeth Hammer. No 

S6 



I POSE 

noble impulse prompted her to do It. She did not 
know of her intention until she found herself In the 
water, and then she thought, " What a fool! " She 
could not swim. The Caribheania looked as distant 
as heaven, and as high. She felt as If she had been 
dead a long time since she saw it last. She paddled 
with her feet and hands like a dog, her mouth was 
full of water and of hair. She had never felt so 
abased in her life, she seemed crushed like a wafer 
into the sinking surface of the nether pit. For cen- 
turies she wrestled with the sea, sometimes for years 
and years on end a wave tore at her breath. She 
never thought of Elizabeth Hammer. 

" This is absurd," she thought, when eternity came 
to an end, and she had time for consecutive thought. 
She felt sure her eyes were straining out of their 
sockets, and tried to remember whether she had ever 
heard of any one going blind through drowning. 
Then she cried, and remembered that her head must 
be above water. If she could cry. She knew then 
that there was some one on her side in the battle. 
The sea seemed to hold her loosely now, instead of 
clutching her throat. She had a moment to con- 
sider the matter from the Caribbeanid's point of 
view, and to realise what a pathetic accident had 
occurred. It dawned upon her that her own hand, 
wearing her mother's wedding ring, was just In front 
of her, holding the cord of a neat white life-buoy. 
*' Caribheania " painted in black on the life-buoy 
seemed like a wide mad smile. 

87 



I POSE 

" This is absurd, " bubbled the suffragette. " I 
shall wake up in a minute now. It's the air makes 
one sleepy. " And then she thought of something 
else for ages and ages, and could not find out what 
she was thinking of, though she tried all the time. 

On the promenade deck of the Caribbeania the 
gardener stood dumb with enormous astonishment. 
His soul was dumb, his limbs were numb, his mental 
circulation was stopped. He had a sort of impres- 
sion that the Atlantic had been suddenly sprinkled 
with a shower of women, but he could only think of 
one drop in the shower. 

" How red her face was as she went under — and 
what a dear she is ! " 

The Caribbeania had flung the two women behind 
her, and swept upon her way, only for a second had 
the red face of the suffragette floated like a cherry 
upon the water beside the black wall of the ship. 
The fourth officer had flung a life-buoy. Theresa 
had fainted. There was a black cork-like thing a 
thousand miles away which the fourth oflicer said 
was the head of one of the women. The Carib- 
beania, checked In her scornful attempt to proceed un- 
caring, was being brought round in a circle. A boat 
was being lowered. 

There was a long silence on the promenade deck. 

Presently — "Is it — her?" asked Courtesy in a 
husky voice by the gardener's side. 

" Of course," answered the gardener. 

88 



I POSE 

Elizabeth Hammer had found the sleep she sought 
without recourse to drugs. 

Everybody watched the distant boat receive the 
thin small warrior out of the grasp of the sea, and 
then sweep in wide circles on its search for Eliza- 
beth Hammer. 

The dream ended. The boat drew alongside.. 
The suffragette, who had to some extent collected 
herself, made a characteristic attempt to step un- 
assisted from the boat. It failed. Everybody had 
come down to the main deck to gratify their curiosity. 
The suffragette was carried on deck, though she 
obviously supposed she was walking. She looked 
somehow out of proportion to the elements with 
which she had battled. 

" You poor lamb," said Courtesy, looking very 
dry and motherly beside her. " How do you feel? 
I'm coming to help you into bed." 

" I am perfectly well, thank you," said the suffra- 
gette. 

" Why did you jump overboard if you couldn't 
swim? " asked the fourth officer, who was young and 
believed that there are always reasons for everything. 

" It was a mistake," said the suffragette testily, 
and was led below by Courtesy and a stewardess. 

Tongues were loosened. Everybody reascended 
to the upper deck to vent their sympathy on Mrs. 
Paul Rust. 

She had remained in her chair, because she felt 

89 



I POSE 

that any other woman would have retired below 
after witnessing the suicide of an indispensable part 
of her travelling equipment. But she could not con- 
trol her complexion. Her face was blue-white like 
chalk, beneath her incongruous hair. She would re- 
ply to no questions, and the priest, after making sev- 
eral attempts to create for himself a speaking part 
in the drama, was obliged to abandon his Intention 
as far as she was concerned, for lack of support. 
He turned to the gardener, whose stunned mind was 
now regaining consciousness. 

*' I do Indeed congratulate you on the rescue of 
your — your wife," said the priest. " Yerce, yerce. 
As for that other poor soul, I was afraid she might 
make some attempt of the sort. She was suffering 
from some Internal complaint, and had lost control 
of herself. Of course she had confided In me — 
yerce, yerce. I was so fortunate as to be able to 
say a few words of comfort. Perhaps It was a mer- 
ciful release. But I hope she was prepared at the 
last. I hope that in that awful moment she thought 
upon her sins." 

" I hope so too," said the gardener. " It Is good 
to die with a happy memory in the heart." 

The general Impression was that Elizabeth Ham- 
mer had made a mistake, poor thing. She was the 
subject of much conversation but little conjecture. 
The big problem of her little mind was not so much 
burled as never unearthed. She had made a mis- 
take, poor thing. That was her epitaph. 

90 



I POSE 

The suffragette was of course a heroine. She was 
a heroine for the same reason as Elizabeth Hammer 
was a poor thing — because nobody had analysed her 
motives. It would have been heresy to suggest that 
the heroine's motive had been pure hysteria. She 
had done a very useless thing in a very clumsy way, 
but because it had been dangerous she was promoted 
to the rank of heroine. 

" I have been a damn fool," mourned the suffra- 
gette, writhing profanely on her bunk. 

" Nonsense," said Courtesy briskly. " You have 
been frightfully brave. It was only hard luck that 
you couldn't save the woman." 

" But I didn't try. I had forgotten all about her 
until this moment." 

" Nonsense," repeated Courtesy, busy with a hot- 
water bottle. " You were splendid. We didn't 
know you had it in you." 

The suffragette laughed her secret laugh, which 
she kept hidden beneath her militant exterior. The 
sort of laughter that flies, not unsuitably, in the very 
face of tragedy. 

" This is a change," she said. 

"What is?" 

" To be respected." 

*' My dear gal, we all respected you all along. 
Personally I always told them : ' Mark my words,' 
I said, ' that gal's got brains.' " 

" Yes, I expect they needed to be told." 

" Nonsense," said Courtesy. 

91 



I POSE 

" For the last five years," said the suffragette, 
" I have followed my conscience over rough land. 
I have been suffragetting industriously all that time. 
And every one laughed behind their hands at me. 
Not that I care. But to-day I have been a fool, and 
they have promoted me to the rank of heroine." 

" Nonsense," said Courtesy. " You're not a fool. 
And surely you never were a suffragette." 

" I am a militant suffragette," said the suffragette 
proudly. " It takes a little courage and no hysteria 
to march through the city with drunk medical 
students waiting to knock you down at the next cor- 
ner; and it takes hysteria and no courage to fall by 
mistake into the Atlantic." 

" You quaint dear," said Courtesy, who had not 
been giving undivided attention to her patient's re- 
marks. " I do believe you've got something in you 
besides brains after all. There now, you must try 
and sleep. Pleasant dreams. And if you're a good 
gal and wake up with some roses in your cheeks, 
you shall have your husband to come and have tea 
with you." 

" No," said the suffragette. " Don't call him 
that." 

Courtesy wrenched the stopper of the hot-water 
bottle tightly on, as though she were also corking up 
her curiosity. 

As she went upstairs Courtesy discovered that she 
quite liked the suffragette — from a height. For a 
person suffering from brains, and from a mystery, 

92 



I POSE 

and from political fervour, and from lack of phys- 
ical stamina, the woman was quite surprisingly like- 
able. 

On deck, Courtesy's friendly feeling was imme- 
diately put to the test. Mrs. Paul Rust beckoned 
her to her side. 

*' That woman who jumped into the water after 
Hammer . . . she is quite well again, of course?" 
It was rather difficult for Mrs. Rust to put this ques- 
tion, because the most obvious form was, " How is 
she? " and that would have been far too human. 

" She'll be all right," said Courtesy. " And even 
if she wasn't she wouldn't say so. She keeps herself 
to herself. You've torn a button off your coat. 
Shall I sew it on for you? You'll miss your maid." 

" I shall not," said Mrs. Rust. " She was a fool 
to behave in that way. Nothing but indigestion." 

" You shouldn't speak hardly of the dead," said 
Courtesy, indomitably conventional. 

" Stuff and nonsense," retorted Mrs. Rust, and 
closed her eyes in order to close the subject. " That 
young woman . . ." 

" I shall call her the suffragette," said Courtesy. 
" She says she is one, and she looks like one." 

" At any rate, the priest tells me she is not mar- 
ried to the ship's gardener. Is that so? " 

*' It's not the priest's business. Nor mine either." 

" You would drop her like a red-hot coal if she 
were not married." 

" Time enough to decide that later. I don't ap- 

93 



I POSE 

prove of irregularity, of course. Marriage after all 
is an excellent idea." 

That turned the balance successfully in the suffra- 
gette's favour. " You are wrong," said Mrs. Rust. 
" Marriage is an idiotic institution. It must have 
been invented by a man, I feel sure. It is like using 
ropes where only a silken thread is necessary." 

" O Lor'," said Courtesy. 

Mrs. Paul Rust decided to reach the truth by in- 
terrogating the gardener. She always tried to ap- 
proach a mystery by the high-road, rightly consider- 
ing that the high-road is the most untrodden way in 
these tortuous days. 

" Come here," she called to the gardener, when 
Courtesy disappeared to see if her patient was 
asleep. 

" Is that young woman who foolishly jumped into 
the sea — your wife?" she asked. 

The gardener had resisted hours of siege on the 
subject. He was tired. Besides he instinctively un- 
derstood Mrs. Rust. 

" In some ways she is," he rephed, after rather 
a blank pause. 

" Good," said Mrs. Rust. 

'* Is that young man who owns a little red hotel 
in the woods in Hampshire your son?" asked the 
gardener, suddenly face to face with an opportunity. 

" In some ways he is," replied Mrs. Rust inevi- 
tably, without a smile. 

The gardener became more and more inspired. 

94 



I POSE 

" Because if you are his mother, I am his friend, and 
you may be interested to know that I put your point 
of view clearly betore him when I met him last. He 
told me that you were unwilling to treat his hotel 
as an investment, and I said, 'Why should she?' 
I said, ' You may take it from me that she won't.' " 

" Then you had no business to take my intentions 
for granted," retorted Mrs. Rust. " What the 
dickens did you mean by it? " 

" I told him . . ." continued the gardener, almost 
suffocating in the grasp of his own cleverness, " that 
obviously you could take no notice of so vague a 
scheme. Ninety-nine women out of a hundred, I 
said, would do as you were doing." 

" You had better have minded your own business," 
interrupted Mrs. Rust wrathfully. " And you had 
better mind it now. I shall do exactly what I like 
with my money, no matter what the other ninety- 
nine women would do." 

" I was afraid you would be annoyed by my speak- 
ing like this," said the gardener humbly. " It is 
only natural." 

" Stuff and nonsense. Do you know that the 
priest is shocked by his suspicions about you and 
your suffragette? " 

" I don't mind," said the gardener. " Being a 
priest, I suppose he is paid to be shocked sometimes. 
I don't object to being his butt." 

" Good," said Mrs. Rust. " Then you don't con- 
tinue to assert that she is your wife." 

95 



I POSE 

" T can't be bothered to continue to assert It," said 
the gardener. 

" Good," said Mrs. Rust. 

The gardener felt that the reward of the success- 
fully unscrupulous rogue was within his reach. Ly- 
ing in a good cause is a lovely exercise. The warm 
feeling of duty begun surged over him. He had 
justified his presence on board the Caribheania, he 
had been true to Samuel Rust. The suffragette was 
not drowned. The blue sea was all round him. 
There was little else to be desired. 

" I shan't be an unscrupulous rogue a moment 
longer than I can help," thought the gardener. " I 
shall pose as being good next. We will be married 
on landing." 

Courtesy at that moment returned and said, 
" Your wife would like you to come and have tea 
with her." 

" Don't leave us alone," begged the gardener of 
Courtesy as they went below. " I don't know how 
to behave to heroines." 

He was obviously at a loss when he reached the 
suffragette's cabin. He had never seen her with 
her hair down, and that upset him from the start. 
He shook her gently but repeatedly by the hand, 
and smiled his well-meaning young smile. He did 
not know what to say, and this was usually a branch 
of knowledge at which he was proficient. 

" Did you know that Captain Walters won the 

96 



I POSE 

sweep yesterday on the Captain's number?" he 
asked. 

" Don't be a donkey," said Courtesy. There was 
a genial lack of sting about Courtesy's discourtesies, 
which kept her charm intact through all vicissitudes. 
" She doesn't want to hear about the sweep. Let 
her be just now. She's busy pouring out your tea." 

For in the same spirit as the nurse allows a con- 
valescent child to pour out tea from its own teapot, 
Courtesy had encouraged the suffragette to officiate. 
The headquarters of the meal, on a tray, were bal- 
anced upon the invalid's bunk. It was not a treat 
to the suffragette, who loathed all the details of 
Woman's Sphere, but for once she did not proclaim 
the ungracious truth. 

" I'm sorry," she said nervously. " It's years 
since I did anything of this sort. But I don't know 
whether you take milk and sugar." 

The gardener distrustfully eyed the hot water with 
vague aspirations towards tea-dom that dripped into 
his cup. 

" I don't take either milk or sugar, thank you," 
he said, " I like my troubles singly." 

" Naughty boy," said Courtesy, helping herself 
generously to cake. " You are beastly rude. And 
you're a naughty gal, too, you suffragette. You 
ought to know how your husband likes his tea." 

" But he's not my husband," said the suffragette. 

The gardener sat with a bun arrested half-way to 

97 



I POSE 

his mouth. He had lived a self-contained existence, 
and had never before had a pose of his dismantled 
by an alien hand. The experience was most novel. 
He hked the suffragette more and more because she 
was unexpected. 

" Nonsense," said Courtesy. " You're feverish. 
You'll tell me what you'll be sorry for, in a minute." 

*' It's true; and I'm far from sorry for it," said 
the suffragette. " It's almost too good to be true, 
but it is. I'm still alone. But because he thought 
I was a menace to England's safety, he brought me 
away — by force." 

" Perfectly true," corroborated the gardener. 

" You babies," said Courtesy. " It's lucky for 
you it's only me to hear you." 

" It's not a secret," said the gardener. " I've just 
been talking about it to Mrs. Rust." 

"And what did she say?" asked Courtesy and 
the suffragette together. 

" She said, ' Good.' " 

At that moment the voice of Mrs. Rust was heard 
in the passage outside. " Miss Briggs." 

Courtesy ran clumsily from the cabin. 

" That button," said Mrs. Rust. " You said you 
would . . . Myself I never can remember which 
finger I ought to wear my thimble on, or at what 
angle the needle should be held . . ." 

Anybody else, arrived within three feet of the 
suffragette's door, would have thrown a smile round 
the corner. But Mrs. Rust did not. She did pos- 

98 



I POSE 

sess a heart, I am told, but a heart is such a hackneyed 
thing that she concealed it. 

" What do you intend to do when you get to Trin- 
It)^ Islands?" asked the suffragette. 

" I don't know what we shall do," replied the 
gardener. " I hate knowing about the future. I 
am leaving it — not to fate, but to my future self." 

" Don't you believe in fate?" 

" No. I believe in myself. I believe I can do 
exactly what I like." 

" And what about me ? Can't I do exactly what 
I like? Do you think you can do exactly what you 
like with me? " asked the suffragette militantly. 

" So far I seem to have succeeded even in that." 

She laughed. 

After a pause he said suddenly, " I am a brute to 
you, you dear, unaccommodating little thing. Some- 
how my will and my deed have got disconnected in 
my dealings with you. It is curious that having such 
good intentions I should still remain the villain of 
the piece. Yet I meant — if ever I had a woman — 
to make up to her for all I have seen my mother go 
through." 

" When you have a woman — perhaps you 
will . . ." said the suffragette. " You must wait 
and see." 

" Come up and see land," shouted Courtesy, 
running in with a semi-buttoned coat in her 
hand. 

The gardener shot up the companion-way, and, 

99 



I POSE 

behold, the gods had touched the sea, and fairy- 
land had uprisen. 

A long vivid island, afire in the ardent sun. Its 
mountain was golden and eccentric in outhne, its 
little town and fortresses had obviously been built 
by a neat-fingered baby-god out of its box of bricks. 
The tiny houses had green shutters and red roofs. 
There was no doubt that the whole thing had only 
been created a minute or two before, it was so neat 
and so unsullied. It was nonsense to call the place 
by the name of a common liqueur, as the quarter- 
master did, any one could see it was too sudden and 
too faery to have a name or to make a liqueur. 
There was something very exciting in the way it had 
leapt out of a perfectly empty sea, and In the way 
It sped over the horizon, as if shrinking from the 
gaze of the proud Caribbeania. 

It passed. The gardener had looked at a dream. 
Courtesy had looked at good dry land. Captain 
Walters had looked at the monastery from which 
the liqueur emanated. Mrs. Rust had not looked at 
all. It is surprising that there should be so much 
difference In the material collected by such Identical 
instruments as one pair of human eyes and another. 

Islands are gregarious animals, they decorate the 
ocean in conveys. The Caribbeania, her appetite 
for speed checked, began to stalk them with bated 
breath. 

" We'll be going through the Hair's Breadth to- 
morrow at seven," said the Captain, in a fat, self- 

lOO 



I POSE 

congratulatory voice, as though he had himself cre- 
ated the channel he referred to. " You must all get 
up early to see her do it." 

There are few penances easier than early rising 
on board ship. There are no inducements to stay 
upon the implacable plane that is your bunk, in the 
hot square cube that is your cabin. Your ear is 
tickled by the sound of the activities of food in the 
saloon outside ; you can hear the sea sinking in a 
cheerful, beckoning way past your inadequate port- 
hole. You emerge from your cabin and find men 
In pyjamas, and ladies in flowered dressing-gowns 
and (if possible) thick pig-tails, or (if impossible) 
pleasing head-erections of lace, sitting in rows at 
sparkling tables, and being fed by stewards with 
apples and sandwiches. There is scarcely ever any 
need to remind the voyager by sea about the tire- 
some superiority that distinguishes the ant. 

The Captain, therefore, had a large audience 
ready for his sleight-of-nerve feat of threading the 
Hair's Breadth. He looked very self-conscious on 
the bridge. 

Land climbed slowly down the spangled sloped sea 
from the horizon. There seemed to be no gap in 
the quivering line of it. Presently, however, as if 
it had quivered itself to pieces, the line was shat- 
tered. Silver channels appeared beckoning on every 
side. The Caribheania, blind except to her duty, 
headed towards the least likely-looking channel of 
all. The most ignorant passenger on the ship could 

lOI 



I POSE 

have told the Captain that he was running into cer- 
tain destruction. Many longed to take command, 
and to point out to the Captain his mistake. Like 
a camel advancing foolhardily upon the needle's eye 
the Carihbeania approached. Her speed was slack- 
ened, she went on tiptoe, so to speak, as if not to 
awaken the gods of ill-chance, but there was nothing 
faltering about her. She thrust her shoulders into 
the opening. 

(It would be waste of time to inform me that in 
nautical language a ship has no shoulders.) 

You could have whispered a confidence to the 
palm trees on either side — except that you would 
have been afraid to draw enough breath to do so, 
for fear of deflecting the ship an inch from her 
course. 

Courtesy was, as usual, bold. She spoke in quite 
an ordinary voice. " Why, look, there's a man 
with hardly anything on, paddling! How killing! 
He's the colour of brown paper! " 

" You'll soon be dead in Trinity Islands if you 
find that killing," snapped Mrs. Rust. " The Cap- 
tain evidently doesn't know his business. We're at 
least six feet nearer to this shore than the other." 

The first of Trinity Islands heaved before them 
quite abruptly when they had traversed the channel. 
The land seemed to have been petrified in the act 
of leaping up to meet them. I think the wind had 
changed upon it at a moment of grotesque contor- 
tion. My nurse used always to warn me that this 

I02 



I POSE 

climatic change might fatally occur when my an- 
atomical experiments became more than usually dar- 
ing. 

Green woods had veiled the harsh shapes of the 
hills. Palms waved their spread hands upon the 
sls^y-line. A tangle of green things tumbled to the 
water's edge. Far away to the right a faint blessing 
of pearl-coloured smoke and a few diamonds flung 
among the velvet slopes of the hills hinted at the 
watching windows of Port of the West. Shipping 
clustered confidentially together on either side of the 
Caribbeania, like gossips commenting jealously on 
the arrival of a princess of their kind. The enter- 
ing liner shook out little waves like messages to 
alight on the calm shore. 

The whole scene looked too heavy to be painted 
on the delicate sea. It was absurd to think that that 
pale opal floor should be trodden by the rusty tramp- 
steamers, the tall red-and-black sailing ships, the 
panting tugs, the blunt and bloated coal-tenders laden 
with compressed nlggerhood. There were broad- 
headed catfish, and groping jellyfish in the water, 
and they alone looked fashioned from and through- 
out eternity for the tender element that framed 
them. 

The suffragette, who had risen from her berth, 

contrary to the advice of Courtesy and of the doctor, 

looked at the first of Trinity Islands with her soul 

in her eyes and a compressed adoration in her breast. 

For there was a silver sea, silver mist enclosing the 

103 



I POSE 

island, and a silver shore shining through the mist. 
Silver, of course, is idealised grey — grey with the 
memory of black and white refined away. Silver is 
the halo of a snake-soul. 

The day was mapped out in so many ways by the 
different passengers of the Caribheania, that, from 
their prophetic descriptions, you could hardly recog- 
nise it as the same slice out of eternity. There were 
globe-trotters, eager to trot this tiny section of the 
globe in hired motor-cars, others anxious to buy 
souvenirs in Port of the West all day, others nerv- 
ously determined to call upon the Governor in 
search of a Vice-regal luncheon, others without im- 
agination desirous of fishing for catfish from the 
poop, and a very few who dared to avow their inten- 
tion of spending the day In absorbing cold drinks on 
the verandah of the King's Garden Hotel. 

In theory the gardener wished to lie upon a chair 
on the shady side of the deck, with a handkerchief 
over his face all day. Such a course would have 
been flattering to his dignity and to his worship of 
aloofness. In practice his unquenchable energy and 
that of the suffragette were too much for him. He 
was vividly stirred by the strange land. The claw- 
like hands of the palms beckoned him. 

Following the suffragette, he bounded on to the 
first launch as eagerly as though he were not a man 
of theory. Behind him bounded Courtesy, and be- 
hind her Mrs. Paul Rust strove to bound. Courtesy, 
the gardener, and the suffragette sat squeezed in a 

104 



I POSE 

row upon a dirty seat in the launch. Mrs. Rust, 
because sitting in a squeezed row was against her 
principles, stood. By these means she kept many 
men-passengers standing in wistful politeness during 
the whole journey of three miles to the shore. 

The bay swept its wide arms farther and farther 
round them. The palm trees on the promontories 
on either side of the town looked no longer beckon- 
ing, but grasping. 

"Oh, isn't it good!" said the gardener, thrill- 
ing so that Courtesy and the suffragette, by reason 
of compressed propinquity, had to thrill too. He 
took the suffragette's hand violently, and waggled it 
to and fro. " Isn't it fine . . ." and he jumped his 
feet upon the deck. 

" You babies," said Courtesy. For the suffra- 
gette, even though she did not jump her feet, was 
jumping her eyes, and obviously jumping the heart 
in her breast. Most unorthodox for a snake. 

" We shall run head foremost into the wharf," 
said Mrs. Rust in a final voice. " What a pity it 
is that sailors never know their work." 

" Yes, isn't it," agreed the gardener, as if he had 
been longing to say something of the sort. " Ex- 
traordinary. Fine. Won't it be fine if we run head 
foremost into the wharf, and sink, to be sealed up 
in this blue jewel here ! " 

He tried to pat the bay with his hand. 

" Closed in the heart of it," said the suffragette, 
" like flies in amber." 

los 



I POSE 

" I shouldn't like it at all," sniffed Courtesy. 

" Not like flies in amber," said the gardener. 
" Because flies spoil the amber." 

" Well, you and I wouldn't exactly decorate the 
sea," remarked the suffragette. 

" Look at those cannibals waiting for us," said 
Courtesy. " My dears, I'm simply terrified." 

The cannibals received them from the launch with 
the proverbial eagerness of cannibals. In the first 
three minutes of their arrival on land the travellers 
could have bought enough goods to furnish several 
bazaars had they been so inclined. The suffragette, 
by tickling the chin of a superb blue and yellow bird, 
was considered to have tacitly concluded a bargain 
with the owner as to the possession of it, and there 
was much discussion before she was disembarrassed 
of her unwelcome protege. The gardener bought 
two walking-sticks in the excitement of the moment, 
before he remembered that he was devoid of money. 
The owner of the walking-sticks, however, kindly 
reminded him of the one-sidedness of the purchase, 
and he was obliged to borrow from the suffragette. 

The town, like a brazen beauty feigning modesty, 
was withdrawn a little from the wharves. There 
was a dry-looking grass space with goats as its only 
gardeners. This the party crossed, and the sensi- 
tive plant ducked and dived into its inner remote- 
ness as they passed. The streets In front of them, 
hot and glaring, pointed to the hills, like fevered 
fingers pointing to peace which is unattainable. 

1 06 



I POSE 

The main street received them fiercely. The heat 
was like the blaring of trumpets. The trams were 
intolerably noisy, clanking, and rattling like a devil's 
cavalry charge. Black, shining women, with the 
faces of bull-dogs — only not so sincere — swung 
in a slow whirlwind of many petticoats up and down 
the street, with vivid burdens of fruit piled in ochre- 
coloured baskets on their heads. Little boys and 
girls, with their clothes precariously slung on thin 
brown shoulders, and well aired by an impromptu 
system of ventilation, ran by the gardener's side, and 
reminded him of the necessity of quatties and half- 
pinnies, even in this paradise of the poor, where 
sustenance literally falls on your head from every 
tree in the forest. 

" This is exhausting," said Mrs. Paul Rust, forced 
by extreme heat into a confession of the obvious. 
" Policeman, where can we get a cab? " 

" Yes, please, missis," replied the policeman, who 
was tastefully dressed in white, by way of a contrast 
to his complexion. 

" Nonsense, man," said Mrs. Rust. " I repeat, 
where can a cab be found?" 

" No, please, missis," replied the policeman, 
acutely divining that his first answer had been found 
wanting. 

" You fool," said Mrs. Rust, another unoriginal 
comment wrung from her by the heat. 

The policeman understood this, and giggled bash- 
fully in a high falsetto. 

107 



I POSE 

" Missis wanta buggy? " asked a tobacconist, with 
a slightly less dense complexion, from his shop door. 
" Policeman nevah understand missis, he only a nig- 
gah." 

The gardener, as ever prone to paint the lily, hur- 
ried into the breach. " Ah yes, of course, we white 
men, we always hang together, eh?" 

It was The Moment of that tobacconist's life. 
The gardener all unawares had crossed in one lucky 
stride those bitter channels that divide the brown 
man from the black, the yellow man from the brown, 
the white man from the yellow, and the buckra, the 
man from England, from all the world. 

Three buggies suddenly materialised noisily out 
of Mrs. Rust's desire. They were all first upon the 
scene, as far as one could judge from the turmoil of 
conversation that immediately arose on the subject. 
The gardener tried to look firm but unbiassed. The 
three women stood and waited in a state of trance. 

The sun was working so hard at his daily task In 
the sky, that one could almost have pitied him for 
being called to such a flaming vocation In this flam- 
ing weather. 

Finally, Mrs. Rust awoke and, entering the near- 
est buggy, shook it to Its very core as she seated 
herself and said, " King's Garden Hotel." 

She could hardly have been recognised as the 
Mrs. Rust of the Caribbean'ia. You could see her 
pride oozing out in large drops upon her brow. Her 
hat was on one side, and completely hid her sensa- 

io8 



I POSE 

tional hair, but for one flat wisp, like an Interroga- 
tion mark inverted, which reached damply to her eye- 
brow. 

The buggy horse, which consisted of a few pro- 
miscuous bones, badly sewn up in a second-hand skin, 
was more than willing to pause until the rest of the 
party should be seated, and even then seemed de- 
sirous of waiting on the chance of picking up yet 
another fare. It was, however, reminded of its 
duty by its driver, and turned its drooping nose in 
the direction of the King's Garden Hotel. 

When they reached that heavenly verandah, they 
felt for a moment as though they were suffering 
from delusions. The Carihbcania seemed to have 
arrived on shore bodily. A long vista of familiar 
profiles rocked cheek by jowl, nose beyond nose, from 
end to end of the verandah. There was Theresa, 
who had made no secret of her intention of accom- 
panying Captain Walters " for a lark " on a visit 
to a Trinity Island Picture Palace. There was the 
priest, who had expressed a determination (which 
nobody had tried to alter) to explore the famous 
botanical gardens all by himself all day. There was 
the fourth officer, who had left the Caribbeania in- 
spired by a vision of a long walk to a sandy beach 
with a bathe at the end of it. There was the cap- 
tain, who had set out to buy his wife a stuffed alli- 
gator as a silver-wedding present. 

That cool strip of green rocking-chairs had acted 
on them all like a spider's web, with the manager of 

109 



I POSE 

the King's Garden sitting in the middle of it, mur- 
muring cool things concerning drinks in an iced voice. 
Exquisite white linen suits of clothes, the only blot 
on whose spotlessness was the nigger inside them, 
ambled up and down the line, lilce field-marshals re- 
viewing the household cavalry, armed humanely with 
lemon squashes and whiskies and sodas. 

The gardener, Mrs. Rust, the suffragette, and 
Courtesy enlisted in this force, and sat in a state of 
torpor only partially dispelled by luncheon, until 
Mrs. Rust began to look herself again. Her hat 
straightened and elevated itself to its normal posi- 
tion, and perched upon her hair like a nest of flowers 
on a ripe hay-field. The curls dried up like parsley 
after rain. 

Little by little the other tourists regained con- 
sciousness, and with much show of energy set forth 
to the nearest buggy stand. 

At about five, Courtesy, who was never happy un- 
less she was moving with the crowd, became rest- 
less. 

** Let's take a buggy and go back to the wharf," 
she suggested. 

" We will hire a four-wheeler and return to the 
pier," said Mrs. Rust in a contradictory voice. 

Buggy or four-wheeler, there was only one sort of 
vehicle to be found in Port of the West. They 
manned the nearest conveyance and quibbled not over 
its title. 

" It would be frightful if we missed the boat," 

no 



I POSE 

said Courtesy, who always said the thing that every- 
body else had already thought of saying, but re- 
jected. 

For the Carihbeania had begun raking the atmos- 
phere with hoarse calls for its dispersed passengers. 

But at the wharf the launch was still fussily col- 
lecting the mails. 

There was a flame-coloured azalea leaning gor- 
geously out of the shade of the eaves of a customs 
house. It was Courtesy's colour — so obviously 
hers that Courtesy herself unconsciously answered its 
call. 

" Ou — I say, that colour," she said, and ceased, 
because she could not voice the echo that streamed 
from her heart to the azalea's. It bent towards her 
like a torch blown by the wind. 

" It's autumn," said the gardener. " And that 
azalea is the only thing that knows it on the island." 

" Good," commented Mrs. Rust. " All this 
green greenhouse rubbish has no sense . . ." she 
waved her hands to the palm trees that plaited their 
fingers over the sky in the background. 

" Autumn, I think . . ." began the gardener, ad- 
dressing the azalea, " autumn runs into the year, 
crying, ' I'm on fire, I'm on fire . . .' and yet glories 
all the while; just as I might say, ' This is passion, 
this is passion . . .' and so it is passion, and pain 
as well, but I love it . . ." 

"What a funny thing to say!" said Courtesy. 

" Do you say that sort of thing by mistake, you 

III 



I POSE 

quaint boy, or do you know what you're talking 
about? " 

" My lips say it by mistake," said the gardener. 
" But my heart knows it, especially when I see — 
a thing like that. Otherwise, why should I have 
become a gardener? " 

He looked round for the suffragette to see if she 
had caught this spark out of his heart, and whether 
the same torch had set her alight. She was not 
there. 

" Come now, everybody," said Courtesy. " The 
launch'll be starting in a minute." 

" But the suffragette's not here," said the gar- 
dener. 

There was an Instant's blank as heavy as lead. 

" Stuff and nonsense," said Mrs. Rust. " I can't 
wait here all day. If she wants to moon around and 
miss the boat, let her. I am going." 

She gave a hand each to two niggers, and sprang 
like a detachable earthquake into the launch. 

" I think I ought to wait," said Courtesy. " She's 
a Httle shaky after yesterday, and you're such an ir- 
responsible boy, gardener. She may have fainted, 
while we were looking the other way. Or she may 
be in that crowd buying souvenirs." 

The gardener looked in the crowd for that well- 
known round hat with the faded flowers. But he 
knew that she would never buy a souvenir. 

" You jump in, gardener. I'll wait," said Cour- 
tesy. " Perhaps there'll be another launch." 

IIZ 



I POSE 

" Lars' launch, missis, please," said one of the 
mariners of the vessel in question. 

" Come at once, girl," said Mrs. Rust's harsh 
voice from the stern. 

Courtesy wavered. 

Mrs. Rust made a great effort. She became ex- 
tremely red. " Don't you understand, girl, you 
must come? " she shouted. " I can't spare you . . . 
I like you . . ." She cleared her throat and 
changed her voice. " Can't sew . . . buttons . . . 
companion . . . large salary . . ." 

But the first part of the sentence reached Cour- 
tesy's sympathy She jumped into the launch. 

The gardener stood on the hot wharf, and his 
heart turned upside down. His plans were stripped 
from him once more by this disgracefully militant 
creature who had broken into his life. He hovered 
on the brink of several thoughts at once. 

" The little fool. The dear little thing. The lit- 
tle devil." 

He ran round the customs house. He felt con- 
vinced that it was interposing its broad person be- 
tween him and his suffragette. He could almost see 
it dodging to hide her from his sight. 

" I shall find her in a minute," he thought. " I'm 
a lucky man." He thought that his hopes were 
pinned to the probability of arriving on the Car'ib- 
beania in time. 

On the brown grass space there were only the 
goats. The gardener was astonished not to see the 

"3 



I POSE 

fleeing form of a woman making for the town. 
Things can be done very quickly if they must. The 
gardener was at the corner of the main street before 
he had time to think another thought. He looked 
back, and saw in one fevered glance the launch only 
just parting from the shore. 

" Have you seen a lady in white with a brown 
hat? " he asked of a policeman. 

" Yes, please, sah." 

"Which way?" 

The conversation was from beginning to end above 
the policeman's head. But such a very hot buckra 
man must be humoured. At random the policeman 
pointed up the main street. The gardener was in- 
deed a man of luck, for that was the right direc- 
tion. 

The main street on a fiery afternoon was as long 
as eternity, but in certain states of mind a man may 
bridge eternity in a breath, and not know what he 
has crossed. 

He was on the race-course. He looked back and 
the launch was approaching the Caribbeania in the 
far-off bay, like a dwarf panting defiance at a giant. 

When he was half-way across the race-course, he 
saw a white figure surmounted by a brown straw hat, 
in the Botanical Gardens, In the shade of a banyan 
tree. 

The suffragette had lighted a cigarette in a la- 
borious attempt to appear calm, but she pressed her 
hand to her breast as though she had been running. 

"4 



I POSE 

" I'm not coming," she shouted, when he was within 
shouting distance. 

He vaulted the raihng of the race-course, and the 
railing of the garden. "What a bore! " he said. 
" Then I must stop too." 

"Why?" she asked. 

Very far off, the launch was nestling at the side 
of the Caribbeania. 

" For reasons I cannot be bothered to repeat to 
you." 

She veiled herself in a cloud of smoke. 

" You know," he added, " this is a repetition of 
the Elizabeth Hammer episode. Pure hysteria. 
Darling." 

There was an appreciable pause. 

" Why, you're right. So it is," said the suffra- 
gette, 

" Come on," shouted the gardener. " We can 
catch it yet." 

" If I come," she said, " it will be strong, not 
weak." 

" Of course," said the gardener. " Come on." 

" It would be much easier to stay here." 

" Oh, much," panted the gardener. " Come on, 
come on." 

So they ran, and on the way back they discovered 
how interminable the main street was, and how re- 
lentless is the sun of the West Atlantic. But when 
they reached the wharf, the launch was still clinging 
to the liner. 

"5 



I POSE 

" A guinea," shouted the suffragette, who was 
experiencing the joys of very big-game hunting, " to 
the boatman who can get us up to the Carihbeania 
before she starts." 

She spoke in the voice of one accustomed to speak- 
ing in Trafalgar Square, and everybody understood 
her. A boat practically cut the feet from under 
them before she had finished speaking, and in it they 
splashed furiously out into the bay. 

" We shall catch it," said the gardener, rowing 
energetically with one finger. " I'm a man of luck." 

He was posing as one who would not utter a re- 
proach. It was a convenient pose for all concerned. 
When they were about halfway, the suffragette said, 
" You know — it takes a little courage to admit hys- 
teria." 

" Of course It does, my dear," said the gardener. 
" I wouldn't have done it for the world." 

Presently they were within bare shouting distance 
of the whale which had threatened to make Jonahs 
of them. A liner's farewells are like those of a great 
many women I know, very elastic indeed. 

" You'll do it," shouted a voice from the high 
boat-deck. 

They did it. The Captain shook his finger at 
them from the bridge. 

"What happened?" asked Courtesy, meeting 
them on the main deck with a shawl to put round 
the suffragette. Some women seem to think that a 

1X6 



I POSE 

shawl, or a hot bath, or a little drop of sal-volatile 
are equal to any emergency under the sun. 

" She didn't know that was the last launch," said 
the gardener, still posing as the magnanimous de- 
fender. 

" Yes, I did," said the suffragette. 

" She was buying a souvenir round the corner," 
persisted the gardener, 

" No, I wasn't," contradicted the lady. " I made 
up my mind not to come back to the Caribbeania." 

" Ou, I say, how killing of you! " said Courtesy. 
" But he changed your mind? " 

*' No. I overcame it." 

" You quaint mite," said Courtesy. 

The gardener's pose momentarily ended here, for 
he was stricken with whirling of the head and sick- 
ness, after running in the sun. Although there was 
a touch of martyrdom about it, it was not a dignified 
ending to a really effective pose. He had to seek the 
comfort of Hilda in his cabin. 

Hilda had three flowers now, and they had cost 
her her Independence, for she leaned upon a stick. 
But among her round green leaves she held up 
bravely her trinity of little gold suns. 

The gardener being thus removed. Courtesy and 
the suffragette sat on the promenade-deck, and dis- 
cussed the day. The suffragette was astonished to 
find herself in this position, being addressed as " my 
dear," by a contemporary. " Just like a real girl," 

117 



1 POSE 

she thought, for as she had never passed through the 
mutual hair-brushing stage with other girls, she al- 
ways expected to be hated, and never to be loved. 
She found it rather delightful to have Courtesy's 
hand passed through her arm, but she also found it 
awkward, and hardly knew how to adjust her own 
arm to the unaccustomed contact. The very small 
details of intercourse are very hard indeed to a snake, 
though pleasant by reason of novelty. 

" So you didn't want to come back, and he bullied 
you?" said Courtesy, frankly inquisitive. "After 
all, my dear, that's what women are for." 

" It Is not! " shouted the suffragette. " Women 
are not born with a curse on them like that. I chose 
to come back; I made a great effort, and came." 

" O Lor' ! " said Courtesy, and tactfully changed 
the subject. Courtesy's tact was always easily visible 
to the naked eye. " My dear, I must tell you what 
a killing interview I had with old Mrs. Rust. She 
clutched my arm when I got into the launch — think 
of that, my dear — and presently she said in a gruff 
sort of frightened voice, as if she was confessing 
a crime, ' Miss Courtesy, I refuse to part with you; 
you are what I have been looking for; you are not 
to pay any attention to anybody else — do you hear? 
I forbid it' I screamed with laughter — on the 
quiet, you know. I said, ' Do you want me to be a 
substitute for Hammer, Mrs. Rust?' 'No,' she 
said. 'Hammer was only a stopgap; I was keep- 
ing the position open for a person like you. I will 

iig 



I POSE 

give you two hundred a year If you will promise to 
stay by me as long as you can bear me ' — and then 
she shouted as if she had made a mistake, and, 
thought that noise could cover It — ' I mean as long 
as I can bear you.' " 

" So what did you answer? " asked the suffra- 
gette, 

" My dear, two hundred a year — what could I 
say?" 

" But what were you originally going out to Trin- 
ity Island for?" asked the suffragette. "To visit 
relatives, weren't you? What will they say? " 

" Oh, they won't say anything — to two hundred 
a year. I was really only coming out as a globe- 
trotter. I loathe colonial relations." 

The matrimonial motive was the skeleton In Cour- 
tesy's cupboard. 

" But wasn't it killing, my dear? " 

" Very killing," agreed the suffragette gravely. 
She felt like one speaking a foreign tongue. 

And then It occurred to Courtesy that she was 
squeezing the arm of one who, after all, had a crim- 
inal disregard of convention. She withdrew her 
arm, and proceeded to try and storm that house 
which she considered to be built on sand. 

" I wish I could understand what you are up to, 
my dear?" she said. "Can't I persuade you to 
leave that naughty gardener, or to marry him? You 
needn't run away, or drown yourself or anything, 
just say to him, ' This won't do.' I should be 

119 



I POSE 

frightfully glad if I could feel you were all right. 
Why don't you get married on landing? " 

" We don't want to," said the suffragette, who was 
too inexperienced in the ways of The Generation to 
feel offended. " We neither of us ever pretended 
to want to." 

" Ou yes, of course I know the catchwords. I 
know you just came together as friends, and didn't 
see any harm in it." 

" But we didn't come as friends — we came as 
enemies." 

" Yes," said Courtesy, with a furrowed brow. 
" But really, my dear, enemies don't do these things." 

" They do. We do." 

" But, my good girl, you must know — you can't 
be as innocent as all that." 

"Great Scott, no!" said the suffragette. "I'm 
not innocent! " 

" Then am I to conclude," said Courtesy, suddenly 
frigid, " that you fully realise the meaning of the 
life you are leading? " 

" You are to conclude that," said the suffragette, 
in a voice of growing militancy. " I realise its 
meaning much more fully than you do. I shall leave 
the gardener directly it becomes convenient to me 
to do so. For an utter stranger his behaviour has 
certainly been insufferable." 

" O Lor' ! " exclaimed Courtesy, falling back upon 
her original line of defence. " An utter stranger 

120 



I POSE 

... I must go and button Mrs. Rust into her even- 
ing gown." 

There is something very annoying to a woman in 
being accused of innocence. The suffragette was 
quite cross. 

For the next two days the Caribbeania threaded 
her way cautiously between shore and shore. The 
horizon was frilled with palm-embroidered lands. 
Dry, terrible-looking beaches, backed by arid brown 
hills, marred the soft character of those calm seas. 
It was as if the Caribbeania saluted the coast of 
South America, and South America turned her back 
upon her visitor. At two or three ports in that for- 
bidding land the boat touched. Drake had passed 
that way, and had left his ill-gotten halo upon the 
coast, but that was the only life of the land. The 
flat, dead towns seemed brooding over flat, dead 
tragedies. 

It was almost a relief to the travellers when the 
last night fell, and the ship was enclosed in darkness 
and its trivial insularity. There was a great dance 
that night. Captain Walters called it the Veterans' 
dance, because the chalked deck was thick with non- 
combatants, who had determined to cast care aside 
and join with youth, because after all it was the last 
night, and one would never meet any of these people 
again. As a matter of fact, there was no youth to 
be joined, for youth sat out and began its farewells. 
Half a dozen hours is not an over-large allowance 

121 



I POSE 

of time for farewells between people who have 
known each other three throbbing ocean weeks. 

The suffragette actually danced with the chief en- 
gineer. He always danced with ladies who could 
not find partners, being a conscientious young man of 
forty-two, with a brand-new bride at home. The 
suffragette knew well that by his courtesy she was 
branded as one undesired, and she laughed her in- 
visible cynical laugh. 

I think men are akin to sheep as well as to mon- 
keys, and the theory only needs a Darwin to trace 
the connection. I have yet to meet the man who, 
where women are concerned, does not follow in the 
track of others of his kind. I think that very few 
men conceive an original preference for a woman 
unbiassed by the public tendency. 

Directly the gardener saw the suffragette dancing 
with the chief engineer, he wondered why he was 
not dancing with her himself, although she danced 
rather badly. The gardener felt a mysterious call 
to go and monopolise her directly she was at liberty. 

" I'm glad you have come to talk to me," said the 
suffragette. " Because I shall go on shore early to- 
morrow, and should like to say good-bye to you." 

" Good-bye?" questioned the gardener. 

" You didn't really expect me to stay with you, 
did you? " she asked. 

" Yes," said the gardener, and thought how peace- 
ful and how stupid life would be without her. " I 
shan't dream of letting you go." And even while 

122 



I POSE 

he said it, he experienced the awful feeling of being 
powerless to make his words good. He realised for 
the first time how indispensable to a man's sight are 
soft straight hair that has never committed itself to 
any real colour, and a small pointed face, and quick 
questioning eyes. But there was something inde- 
scribable, peculiar to the suffragette, that made it 
impossible to humble oneself before her. She was 
anything but a queen among women; no man had 
ever wished to be trodden under her feet, though 
they were small and pretty. Plain people often 
have pretty hands and feet, a mark of Nature's tardy 
self-reproach. 

To any other woman, the gardener might have 
said, " Please, my dear . . ." with excellent results. 
He had a good voice with a tenor edge to it, and he 
could pose very nicely as a supplicator. But not to 
the suffragette. 

*' I have not brought you all this way just to let 
you return to your militant courses," he said, with a 
sort of hollow firmness. " I owe a duty to Trinity 
Island, after all, now that I have imported you." 

The suffragette smiled and said she was tired and 
would go to bed — good-bye. 

The gardener said Good-night. 

The Caribheania and the first ray of the sun 
reached the Island simultaneously next morning. 
When the gardener came on deck at half-past seven 
he found himself confronted by the town of Union, 
backed by its sudden hills. The Caribheania, like a 

123 



I POSE 

robber's victim, ignominiously bound to the pier, was 
being relieved of its valuables. The air was thick 
with talk. On the pier the over-dressed representa- 
tives of British rule, in blue serge and gold braid, 
rubbed shoulders with the under-dressed results of 
their kind tyranny, in openwork shirts and three- 
quarters of a pair of trousers. 

" Your wife went off early," said the fourth offi- 
cer to the gardener. " I asked her whether she were 
eloping all by herself, and she said you knew all 
about it." 

" Thanks," said the gardener curtly. 
You will hardly believe me when I tell you that 
his first conscious thought after this announcement 
was that he had no money to tip the steward with. 
The suffragette meant a good deal to him, and 
among the things she meant was temporary financial 
accommodation. 

I hope that you have noticed by now that he was 
not a money-lover, but a steward was a steward, and 
this particular steward had been kind in improvising 
a crutch for Hilda. Any assistance from the suffra- 
gette was, of course, taken as temporary: independ- 
ence was one of the gardener's chronic poses. He 
meant to change it from a rather hollow dream into 
reality on arriving on the Island; he supposed that 
he would be able to turn his brains Into money. He 
considered that no such brain could ever have landed 
at Union Town. Its price In coin, which had been 
rather at a discount in the stupid turmoil of London, 

124 



I POSE 

would be Instantly appreciable under this empty sky. 
His pose on the Island was to be The One Who 
Arrives, in capital letters. 

He went down to his cabin to pack his little lug- 
gage. He had nothing beloved to pack now; men's 
clothes seem to be Inhuman things without a touch 
of the lovable, and they were all he had. For Hilda 
was dead. For the last week of her life she had 
been a little concrete exclamation of protest against 
her unnatural surroundings. One born to look sim- 
ply at the sun, from the shelter of a whitewashed 
cottage wall, with others of her like jostling beau- 
tifully round her; a fantastic fate had willed that 
she should reach the flower of her life In a tipsy 
cabin, with a sea-wind singing outside the thick glass 
against which she leant. The gardener had given 
her a sailor's grave somewhere near the spot In the 
Spanish Main to which I hope the spirit of Drake 
clings, for his mother-sea received him there. It 
was hardly a suitable ending for Hilda, but It was 
the best available. 

The gardener set himself to put his scanty prop- 
erty together stealthily, and creep from the boat, that 
the stewards might not see him go. He had an un- 
posed horror of ungenerosity. To him, as to most 
men, the tip was more of a duty than the discharge 
of a debt. He suffered keenly for a while from the 
discovery that there was no escaping from the stew- 
ards to-day, they were stationed with careful care- 
lessness at every corner. Presently the siege was 

125 



I POSE 

raised unexpectedly by the arrival of the boot-boy 
with a note. 

" The lady left it, sir." 

It contained a five-pound note, and it was ad- 
dressed in the suffragette's small defiant handwriting. 

Of course the hero of a novel should have thrown 
the whole missive into the sea. He should have 
struck an attitude and explained to the admiring 
boot-boy that such gifts from a woman could only be 
looked upon as an insult. But you must remember 
the gardener considered that the fortunes of the 
Island were at his feet. And he would not have 
gone so far as to pose at his own expense — not to 
speak of the steward's. He put the note in his 
pocket, and went to the purser for change. 

When his duties were discharged, he came on deck 
to collect any plans that might be in the air. It is 
a most annoying fact that theories will not take the 
place of plans. In theory you may be The One Who 
Arrives, but in practice you have to think about pass- 
ing the customs and finding a cheap hotel and getting 
yourself a sun-helmet. I think the world has an 
antipathy to heroes; it certainly makes things very 
hard for them. 

On deck Courtesy was sitting calm and ready. 
Her plans had been made for three days. She had 
only just stopped short of writing a time-table for 
the hourly career of herself and Mrs. Rust through- 
out their sojourn on the island. She had a genius 
for details. 

226 



I POSE 

" The suffragette has disappeared," said the gar- 
dener. A disarming frankness was one of his 
weapons. 

" I'm jolly glad," replied Courtesy. " I believe 
you owe that to me, you naughty boy. I gave her 
a bit of my mind about it the other day." 

The gardener uttered no reproaches. He felt 
none. For he had learnt by now that the suffra- 
gette would never be affected by a bit of anybody's 
mind. 

"What are you going to do?" asked Courtesy. 
" We are going to the St. Maurice Hotel for four 
days — Father Christopher told us of it — and at 
mid-day on Saturday we go up to the hills for a fort- 
night, and then we hire a car and tour round the 
Island, staying twenty-four hours at Alligator Bay." 

" I'm going to look for work," said the gardener. 

" Sugar or bananas? " 

" Neither. Head-work." 

" Stuff and nonsense," said Mrs. Rust. " Nobody 
on the Island ever uses their head except to carry 
luggage on." 

" That's why I shall find work. There's no com- 
petition In my line." 

" You funny . . ." giggled Courtesy. " Isn't he 
quaint. Father Christopher?" 

For the priest was passing on his twenty-second 
circuit of the deck. 

" Very droll, no doubt," said the priest In the 

voice of a refrigerator, and continued to pass. He 

127 



I POSE 

was very much annoyed with the gardener's soul. 

The gardener waited till he came round again be- 
fore saying to Courtesy, " Besides, I have to look 
for the suffragette." 

" I hope you won't find her this time," said Cour- 
tesy. " Will you come to tea with us one day, and 
tell us which of your searches seems most hopeful. 
You see, now the suffragette's gone, you are respec- 
table for the moment, and I needn't be afraid for 
Mrs. Rust's morals." 

When Courtesy giggled, her hair laughed in the 
most extraordinary way. Everything she did was 
transmuted into something wonderful by that halo 
of hers. 

" I'll come to-day, if I may," said the gardener, 
who had never mastered the art of social diffidence. 
" You'd better have me to-day, for I hope I shan't 
be respectable to-morrow." 

Courtesy did not want him to-day. In her code 
there was only one programme for the first day in 
a strange land. It was made up of a visit to the 
principal church, the principal shop, the principal 
public gardens, and to a few " old-world relics of the 
past." It did not include ordinary five-o'clock tea 
with a famlHar figure. But, on the other hand, her 
invincible conventionality made it impossible for her 
to evade the gardener's suggestion. Courtesy was 
content to suffer for her convictions. At any rate, 
you will notice that Mrs. Rust was not consulted. 
You may come," Courtesy said. " At five. 



I POSE 

We are due back from the cathedral at a quarter 
to." 

Probably the reason why Mrs. Rust submitted to 
Courtesy's tyranny from the first was that no other 
woman in the world would have done so. 

The land reeled under the gardener's feet as he 
arrived. The only comfort in parting with the sea 
after a long intimacy is that for the first day or two 
the land follows the example of its sister element. 
The gardener found more difficulty in walking 
straight along Union High Street than he had experi- 
enced along the deck of the Carihheania. 

The morning was yet very young when he put his 
little luggage down at the bamboo-tree arch of a 
house that proclaimed itself ready to receive board- 
ers at moderate terms. He relied much on impulse, 
and the little house, which was lightly built on its 
own first story, so to speak, beckoned to him. But 
only in theory, for when he mounted the flight of 
wooden steps, and, through the open door, saw the 
dirty living-room, seething with gaudy trifles, he 
knew that in practice it was better suited to his means 
than to his mind. 

However, he had rung the bell. One has to pay 

penalties for acting on impulse. A woman with 

black wire hair, a face the colour of varnished deal, 

and a pale pink dressing-gown, appeared. Luckily 

she transpired to be the hostess before the gardener 

had voiced the fact that he mistook her for a drunken 

housemaid. 

129 



I POSE 

" I want a room here," began the gardener, who 
had never wanted anything less In his life. But the 
three pounds lay very light in his pocket. 

*' We can give you one," said the lady, and took 
his portmanteau. She could have given him sev- 
eral, but not one worth having. She conducted him 
through one or two doors that led from the living- 
room. Each showed a less attractive bedroom than 
the one before, but the cheapest was barely within 
the range of prudence, as far as the gardener's pocket 
was concerned. In a leaden voice, proceeding from 
a heart of lead, he concluded a bargain for the tem- 
porary possession of the least Inviting. And when 
it was done, and the portmanteau deposited drearily 
In the middle of a dirty linoleum floor, he discovered 
that time had been standing still, and that It was 
hardly nearer five o'clock than before. 

It was the first time he had realised the four thou- 
sand miles that lay between him and the kindly grey 
pavements of Penny Street. He remembered the 
look of the London lamps reflected In the slaty mir- 
rors of London streets . . . the smile of the ridic- 
ulous little griffin who sits on a pedestal at the top 
of Fleet Street, playing the 'cello with his shield 
. . . the shrugging shoulders of St. Paul's on tip- 
toe on the peak of Ludgate Hill . . . the dead 
leaves blowing down the Broad Walk, in the 
rain . . . 

There is no pose that saves you from that awful 

130 



i Pos£ 

longing for the things that are no longer yours, and 
which you hated while you possessed. 

" I said I was enough for myself. And I am not," 
said the gardener, and hid his face In the mosquito 
net. 

Strange things in barbaric colours made the gar- 
den outside a whirlpool. Sometimes these things say 
to you : " You are a very long way from home " ; 
and you exult, and think This is Life. But some- 
times they say again: "You are a very long way 
from home " ; and you cry out, and think This is 
Worse than Death. 

Now there are moral drawbacks about the posing 
habit. But there are also advantages, though pos- 
sibly none deserved. For after three minutes of 
despair the gardener straightened himself, blinked, 
and began putting his spare shirt into a drawer that 
would not shut. He was posing as One Who was 
Seeing Life, and who was Making the Best of it. 
The vision that inspired this brave pose was the 
ghost of a pair of small haggard eyes, set In a short 
pointed face, eyes that cried easily and never sur- 
rendered. A thin unbeautiful ghost with clenched 
fists, and in the air, the ghost of a low and militant 
voice. 

" I am not enough," the gardener admitted. 
" But together, we are enough." 

He whistled a comic song tentatively. The Eng- 
lishman never whistles or sings to suit his feelings. 

131 



I POSE 

He dies to the tune of " Tipperary,'* or goes to his 
wedding humming the " Dead March in Saul." 

There was no more life to be seen in that hot 
little room, even by one fixed in an optimistic pose. 
He emerged into the sitting-room, and through an 
opposite and open door he could see the pink dress- 
ing-gown, containing his landlady, heaving sleepily 
under a mosquito net. One of her bare feet was 
drooping under the net. At this he had to swallow 
down London again violently, and remember that he 
was Seeing Life, and that he was Luckier than Most. 

Did you know that the surest way of ensuring luck 
Is to be sure that you are lucky? 

" Now I will find my suffragette," he said, stand- 
ing between the bamboos at the gate. And he ex- 
pelled an entering misgiving that he was perhaps pre- 
suming on his luck. 

It was curiously cool in the shade of the high 
cactus hedge that ran along one side of the way. 
A fresh breeze, like the unbidden guest at the wed- 
ding, conscious that it was not attired In character, 
crept guiltily In from the sea. The sun, which 
would have disclaimed even distant relationship with 
the cool copper halfpenny that Inhabits English skies, 
fretted out the black shadows across and across the 
white street. The gardener thought painfully of 
many glasses of cold water that he had criminally 
wasted In England. He stiffened his long upper lip, 
and tried to look for new worlds Instead of remem- 
bering the old. 

133 



I POSE 

He went into the Botanical Gardens, and sat on 
a seat opposite the mad orchids. I think the Al- 
mighty was a little tired of His excellent system by 
the time He came to the orchids, so He allowed 
them to fashion themselves. For they are contrived, 
I think, and not spontaneously created like the rest. 

On the other end of the seat were two children, 
so blessedly English that for a moment the gardener 
smelt Kensington Gardens. The girl wore very lit- 
tle between her soft neck and her long brown arms 
and legs, except a white frill or two, and a passion 
flower in her sash. The boy, more modest, was en- 
cased in a white sailor suit. Both were finished 
off at the feet with sandals. 

Hardly had the gardener sat down when he was 
regretfully aware that he had sat by mistake on a 
pirate-ship in mid-ocean. The two commanders 
looked coldly at him from their end of the treasure- 
laden deck, and there was an awkward silence which 
somehow left the impression that muct exciting talk 
had immediately preceded it on that vessel. 

" I beg your pardon," said the gardener. " I 
forgot to tell you that I am the prisoner you seized 
when you captured your last prize. There was a 
desperate resistance, but in spite of heavy odds, you 
overcame me." 

The boy, because he was a boy, looked for a sec- 
ond towards his mahogany-coloured Nana, who was 
staring an orchid out of countenance farther up the 
path. The girl, because she was a girl, looked 

133 



I POSE 

neither right nor left, but straight at the gardener, 
and said: "All right then. But you mustn't let 
your feet dangle into the sea. And you must be very 
frightened." 

The gardener restrained his feet, and became so 
frightened that the whole vessel shook. The boy 
continued to look doubtful, until his sister reminded 
him in a hoarse whisper: " It's all right, Aitch, we 
were wanting somebody to walk the plank." 

In providing a willing villain, the gardener was 
supplying a long-felt want in pirate-ships. So thor- 
oughly did he do his duty that when he was finally 
obliged as a matter of convention to walk the walk- 
ing-stick blindfolded, and die a miserable death by 
drowning in the gravel-path, the pirate-ship seemed 
to have lost its point. 

" Let's betend," said the lady-pirate, " that Aitch 
and me are fairies, and we touch you with our wand 
and you turn into a speckled pony." 

" Greatscod, no," said Aitch; for there are limits 
to what a fellow of seven can betend In company. 
" Don't let's have any falrying, my good Zed. Let's 
betend we're just Aitch and Zed, and we'll show the 
prisoner the Secret Tree." 

So they set off, and the Nana, who might as well 
have been a Nannlng-machine for all the individual- 
ity she put Into her work, trotted behind them. 

The Secret Tree was one of those secrets that 
remain Inviolate because It occurs to nobody to lay 
them bare. It was an everyday little palm tree, ex- 

134 



I POSE 

quisltely bandaged by Nature in cocoanut matting; 
it was very fairy-like, and when you looked up at its 
fronds In their Infinite intersections against the sky, 
you saw a thrill, like the thrill you see on a cornfield 
curtseying In the wind, or In the light moving across 
watered silk. In one of the folds of the palm tree's 
garment a White Pawn, belonging to Altch, had 
made his home. He lived there for days at a time 
— the gardener was told with bated breath — and 
the park-keeper never knew he was there. At night 
he saw the fireflies light their lamps, and heard the 
swift slither of the fearful scorpion; once he had 
reported an adventure with a centipede three times 
his own size. That pawn was the epitome of Peo- 
ple Who Stay Up Late At Night, and Are Not 
Afraid of the Dark. A super-grown-up. 

On their way to the garden gate, each child held 
a hand of the gardener, and the automatic Nana 
walked behind. As they came out Into the main 
street, the gardener thought that the houses looked 
like skulls — so white they were, and so soulless, and 
their windows so black and empty. 

" Greatscod," said Altch, " what Is happening to 
the church steeple?" 

For It was reeling In front of them, to the tune 
of a paralysing open roar from underground. 

Behind them the automaton blossomed madly Into 
life. Nana fled shrieking back Into the garden. 

Those two things happened, one by one, like sparks 
struck out of a flaming experience. Then everything 

135 



I POSE 

happened at once, and yet lasted a lifetime. There 
seemed not a second to spare, and yet nothing to be 
done. 

The gardener felt unspeakably terrified, his mother 
earth shot away from under him, truth was proved 
false. He discovered that he had seized Aitch and 
Zed, one under each arm; and later on — his mem- 
ory having vaulted the blank — he found that he 
was lying on them in the gutter, and that Aitch was 
yapping like a dog. Zed was crying, " Mother, 
Mother." And the gardener, with a quick vision of 
some one watering a cool English herbaceous border, 
also said, " Mother, Mother." 

After a while a green beetle ran past his eye, and 
he recalled the moment, and raised himself upon his 
hands and knees. A fire of pain burnt him suddenly, 
and he turned his head and saw a pyre of twisted 
iron posts heaped upon his legs. 

The air was thick with strange sounds, muffled 
as if from a gramophone. Some one quite near, but 
unseen, was shouting, " Oh, Oh," as regularly as a 
clock's chime. There was a rending wheeze behind 
them, and the gardener looked round in time to see 
a palm tree sink with dignity into a trench that had 
been gashed at Its feet. But that might have been 
a dream. 

He felt absolutely sick with horror. His head 

seemed as though It were all at once too big for his 

skin. His whole being throbbed terribly In a sort 

136 



I POSE 

of echo of the three throbs that had laid hfe by the 
heels. 

Yock — Yollock — Yollock. A pounce, and then 
two shakes, like a terrier dealing with a rat. Why 
had one ever trusted oneself to such a risky crumb 
of creation as this world? The gardener lost him- 
self in littleness. And presently found that he had 
insinuated himself into a sitting position, and was 
feeling very sick indeed. 

" That was an earthquake," remarked Zed, with 
the truly feminine trick of jumping to foregone con- 
clusions. And she burst into tears, wailing still, 
" Mother, Mother." 

*' It is funny we should both have thought of her," 
observed the gardener, forgetting that there was 
room for more than one mother in this tiny world. 
His eyes were fixed on a thin and fearful stream of 
blood that was issuing from between two bricks in 
the mass of miscellany that had once been a house. 
" Blood — from a skull? " he thought, and fainted. 

For centuries his mind skirted round some enor- 
mous joke. It was so big that he could not see its 
point, and then again it was so little that he lost it. 
At any rate it was round, and turned with a jovial 
hum. 

Later on he was aware of the solution of a prob- 
lem which he felt had been troubling him all his life. 
What colour was the face of a nigger pale with 

fright? It was several colours, chiefly the shade of 

137 



I POSE 

a wooden horse he had once loved, but mottled. 
But the whites of the eyes were more blue than white, 
they shone lilce electric light. With an effort he 
fitted the various parts of his mind together. 

" Hullo, constable," he said in a voice he could 
not easily control. " This is a pretty business, isn't 
it?" And he tried to rise, and to whistle a bar 
or two, in an effort to assume the pose of the hero 
who trifles in the face of death. But he could not 
rise. He was pinned to the pavement by a leg that 
seemed somehow to have lost its identity. 

It is not in the least romantic to be hurt. There 
is something curiously dirty in the feeling of one's 
own pain, and in the sight of one's own blood, though 
wounds in others are rather dramatic. 

Now Courtesy was a person who, without ever 
trying to be sensational, was often unexpected by 
mistake. Coincidence seemed to haunt her. Out 
of the hundred streets that lay shattered in Union 
Town that afternoon, she chose the one in which 
the gardener lay, and, accompanied by the priest, 
she bore down upon that unheroic hero, laden with 
brandy and bandages. The gardener saw her large 
face, frank as a sunflower, between him and the 
yellow sky. 

The priest was quite obviously a saviour. You 
could see in his eye that he was succouring the 
wounded. You could hear in his voice as he ad- 
dressed the terrified hotel porters who followed him 
that he was busy rising nobly to an emergency. 

138 



I POSE 

" Why, gardener," said Courtesy, in the tones of 
one greeting a friend at a garden party. " You 
here ? I was wondering what had become of you. 
Now what's the matter with you? " 

She poured him out some brandy, as though It 
were the ordinary thing for a lady to offer to a 
friend in the street. And the gardener's world re- 
gained its feet, he wondered why he had been so 
frightened. 

" Poor little mites," said Courtesy to Aitch and 
Zed. " They won't forget this in a hurry, will 
they?" 

There is something very comforting in the utterly 
banal. That is why the instinct is so strong in good 
women to make you a cup of tea, and poke the fire, 
when you are crossed in love. 

" But if she had been the suffragette . . ." 
thought the gardener. He knew quite well that the 
thing would not have been so well done, had it been 
the suffragette. He was fully aware that the opera- 
tion of having his leg put into improvised splints, and 
of being lifted upon a door, would have been much 
more painful, had it been accomplished by the little 
nervous hands of the suffragette, instead of the large 
excellent hands of Courtesy. 

It is discouraging to those of us who have spent 
much money on becoming fully efficient in first aid 
and hygiene and practical economy and all the lux- 
uries of the modern female intellect, to find how per- 
fect imperfection can seem. 

139 



I POSE 

"Thank you — you little darling," said the gar- 
dener with his eyes shut, when, after a few spasms 
of red pain, he was safe upon the door. White-clad 
hotel porters stood like tombstones at his head and 
feet. 

" Lor' bless you," said Courtesy. " Take him to 
the St. Maurice, porter. It's the only place left more 
or less standing, I should think." 

" It Is not," said the priest. " Excuse me. Miss 
Briggs, there are thousands in this stricken town in 
need of our help, and I should prefer that only the 
gentler and worthier of the sufferers should come 
under that roof. There are many excellent resting- 
places where our friend here would be far more suit- 
ably placed. You ought to know his character by 
now, and you must think of your own good name." 

" Rot," said Courtesy. " What do his morals 
matter when he's broken his leg? " 

" Remember you are also succouring these innocent 
children," persisted the priest. " Would you have 
them under the same roof? " 

" Rot," repeated Courtesy. " The roof'U be all 
right." 

. " Dose little children . . ." said the policeman 
suddenly. " He covahed dem when dat house was 
fallin'. Verree brave gentleman. I chahnced to be 
runnin' by. . . ." 

" Of course he did," said Courtesy. " The St. 

Maurice, porter." And seizing Aitch and Zed each 

by a hand, she started the procession. 

140 



I POSE 

The High Street looked as If one side of it had 
charged the other with equally disastrous results to 
both. At different points in It, fire and heavy smoke 
were animating the scene. Distracted men and 
women panted and moaned and tore at the wreckage 
with bleeding hands. A little crying crowd was col- 
lected round a woman who lay nailed to the ground 
by a mountain of bricks, with her face fixed In a glare 
of terrible surprise. By the cathedral steps the dead 
lay in a row, shoulder to shoulder, with the horrid 
uniformity of sprats upon a plate. Courtesy lifted 
up Zed and called Altch's attention to the healthier 
distress of a little dog, which ran around looking for 
Its past in the extraordinary mazes of the present. 

The gardener, swinging along painfully upon his 
door, opened his eyes and saw the fires. To his sur- 
prise he recognised the house which could boast the 
highest flames. Its wall had fallen to disclose the 
shattered remains of the rooms in which the gar- 
dener had lately wrestled with despair. The bam- 
boos and the gorgeous garden watched unmoved the 
pillar of fire that danced in their midst. There was 
no sign of the wire-haired woman. 

But only one thought came to the gardener's mind 
on the subject. " Why she will see that. It Is a 
beacon from me to her." 

As a matter of fact she did not. 

A pretty woman, crying in a curious laughing voice, 

ran Into Courtesy's arms. " My little babies : . ." 

she quavered. " What a catastrophe. I don't 

141 



I POSE 

know where my husband is. There Is a grand piano 
on my bed." 

" This is my mother," said Aitch, 

" Come along to the St. Maurice," said Courtesy. 
" That's where I am taking your babies to. Our 
piano there is still in its proper place." 

So they all followed the gardener. 

" Somebody must go and find a doctor," said 
Courtesy at the door of the St. Maurice. She 
looked suggestively at the priest. 

But he replied, " I wash my hands of the matter. 
Miss Briggs. I consider this to be a judgment on 
that young man." 

"A judgment?" wept the mother of Aitch and 
Zed. " Why, what has he done? " 

" He saved the lives of your babies," replied 
Courtesy. " And anyway, a judgment needs a sur- 
geon just as much as a simple fracture." 

" Yerce, yerce, only don't ask me to help," said 
the priest. " I prefer to succour those deserving of 
help." And he went out into the street again. He 
seemed wedded to the word succour. It is a pose 
word, and fitted him exactly. Nothing but an earth- 
quake could have made this worm turn. But the 
effect of the disaster on the priest was an obstinate 
certainty that there was a Jonah in the case, and that, 
as heaven was never to blame, the wicked were en- 
tirely responsible. 

" Oh, Lor'," said Courtesy. " I'll have to go for 
a surgeon myself." 

142 



I POSE 

" I'll go with you," cried the mother of Altch and 
Zed, whose name, for the sake of brevity, was Mrs. 
Tring. " I don't know what has become of my 
Dally " (who was her husband). 

" Somebody must sit with the gardener," said 
Courtesy, when she came back from a success- 
ful search for an intact bed, into which, with the 
help of a housemaid, she had inserted the gar- 
dener. 

" I will sit with him," said the harsh voice of Mrs. 
Rust, as she rose from a seat where she had been 
sitting with an enormous paper bag held in a rigid 
hand. " I refuse to run about the streets with 
brandy. All the old cats are doing that." 

" Why, Mrs. Rust," observed Courtesy, whose 
conventionality was not quite so striking after an 
earthquake as it had been upon the comparatively 
stable Atlantic. " I had clean forgotten that you 
existed." 

" Good," said Mrs. Rust. " I was buying man- 
goes when the incident occurred. Perhaps the gar- 
dener would like a mango." 

" Perhaps he would. I am so glad to see that you 
don't take the same view about the gardener as 
the " 

" I never take the same view," barked Mrs. Rust. 
" Show me the boy's room." 

So the gardener saw that poisonous hair advance 
along a shaft of sunlight that intruded through the 
broken shutter. 

143 



I POSE 

" Your jug and basin are broken," said Mrs. Rust. 
" Disgraceful." 

" Oh, there are several things broken in this 
town," he said feverishly. " Windows and necks 
and a heart or two." 

Mrs. Rust sat deliberately on a chair and burst 
into tears. 

" I was buying mangoes," she sobbed stormily, 
" from a black man with bleached hair. And the 
whole of a shop-front fell out on him. One brick hit 
my toe. I looked at the man through a sort of cage 
of fallen things. It was as if — one had trodden on 
red currants." 

"What did you do?" panted the gardener. 
" How fine to live in a world where things happen." 

" I ran away," said Mrs. Rust shakily. " I didn't 
pay for the mangoes." 

" I would rather have had this happen," said the 
gardener after a pause, " and have broken my leg, 
than have had an ordinary day to meet me on Trinity 
Island." 

After another pause, he added : " But I have lost 
the suffragette. And that is another matter." 

" Was she killed? " asked Mrs. Rust, steeling her- 
self against the commonplace duty of condolence. 

" Certainly not," replied the gardener. " She is a 
militant suffragette." 

" Good," said Mrs. Rust. 

" How good the world is," said the gardener, " to 

provide such excellent material. The sea, and the 

144 



I POSE 

earthquake, and a fighting woman to love. Just 
think — an earthquake — on my first day. I am a 
man of luck." 

" You have broken your leg," Mrs. Rust informed 
him. 

" I have," admitted the gardener rather fretfully. 
" But then everything has its price." 

" A good many other people have come off much 
worse," said Mrs. Rust. " I'm not complaining, 
mind, but any other woman would say you were dis- 
gracefully selfish. A lot of people are dead, and a 
lot of other people's people are dead . . ." 

" The longer I live . . ." said the gardener, from 
the summit of his twenty-three years, " the surer I am 
that we make a fuss which is almost funny over 
death. We run after it all over the world, and then 
we grumble at it when it catches us up from behind. 
It's an adventure, of course, but then — so is — 
shaving every morning. Compare death with — 
love, for instance." 

He felt ashamed of this after he had said it, and 
tried to cover it with a little laugh which shook him, 
and changed into a yelp. After breathing hard for a 
little while he went on. 

" We who have survived this ordeal have gained 
much more than we risked. I know that anything 
is worth a risk, the risk in itself is the gain, and to 
risk everything for nothing is a fine thing. Why 
otherwise do we climb Alps, or hunt the South Pole? 
In theory, I would run in front of an express train to 

145 



I POSE 

save a mou. In theory I don't mind what I pay for 
danger. That's why I love the suffragette; she 
would risk her life for a little vote, and her honour 
for a bleak thing like independence." 

" Do you love the suffragette? " asked Mrs. Rust, 
who was at heart a woman, although she believed her- 
self to be a neutral intelligence. 

" I do, I do," cried the gardener, suddenly and 
gloriously losing his pose of One Who Evolves a 
New Scale of Values — in other words, the pose of a 
Paradox. But his emotion awoke his nerves, and 
for a while, although the suffragette obsessed his im- 
agination, pain obsessed the rest of the universe. 

When Courtesy and the doctor came in, they found 
the gardener with a temperature well into three 
figures. So for some time Mrs. Rust was not al- 
lowed to see the patient. 

By the time the gardener felt better, the earth- 
quake, in the eyes of the townspeople of Union, had 
become not so much of a horror as a disaster, a thing 
possible to dilate upon and even to lie about. The 
homeless were beginning to look upon homelessness 
as a state to be passed through rather than the end 
of things, the bereaved were discovering little by 
little that life may arise from ashes, and that sack- 
cloth may be cut quite becomingly. Those ghosts of 
dead hope who still searched among the ruins were 
looked upon as " poor things " rather than com- 
panions in sorrow. Young nigger ladies, dressed in 

146 



I POSE 

pink and silver, flaunted their teeth and their petti- 
coats around the firemen who worked desultorily at 
the little gaseous fires that broke out among the 
lamentable streets. The one church that remained 
standing was constantly full. (The picture palace 
had met the fate it perhaps deserved.) There is 
nothing in the world so saved as a saved nigger. 
And nothing so lost as a lost nigger. After an earth- 
quake it always occurs to these light and child-like 
minds that it is safer to be saved. The horse has 
fled from the stable, but the door might as well be at- 
tended to, and the padlock of salvation is not expen- 
sive. Fervent men and women throng the pews, 
shouting hymns down the back of each other's neck, 
and groaning away sins they do not realise, to the 
acccompaniment of words they do not understand. 
Those who have lived together in innocent sin hurry 
to the altar for the ring, which, to these harmless 
transgressors, is as the fig-leaf apron of Eden, and 
heralds virtuous tragedy. 

When the gardener became well enough to resent 
being ill, he was allowed visitors, among whom was 
one, by name Dallas Tring, Esquire. This was a 
very honest man who, in spite of having an excellent 
heart, believed that he always told the truth at all 
costs. The only lie he permitted himself, however, 
was constantly on his lips. It was : " I take your 
meaning." 

It was obviously unnatural to him to be enthusias- 

147 



I POSE 

tic. It is to most very honest people. He came into 
the gardener's room like an actor emerging from 
stage fright on to the stage. 

" You saved my children from being crushed to 
death," he said, and seized the gardener's hands. 
" Thank you, thank you." 

" Oh, not at all," murmured the gardener. " I 
pretty nearly crushed them to death myself. Have 
a whisky and soda." 

This last is the Trinity Island retort to everything, 
its loophole, its conversational salvation. The 
average Englishman takes several weeks to acquire 
the habit in the real Island style, but the gardener was 
always more adaptable than most. 

Privately he did feel unreasonably conceited about 
the rescue. He would have admitted that the im- 
pulse to gather Aitch and Zed beneath his prostrate 
form had been unconscious, but he considered that 
unconscious heroism proves heroism deeply ingrained. 
Nevertheless, the people who voice your conceit for 
you are only a little less trying than the people who 
relieve you of the duty of being humble. One must 
do these things for oneself. 

Mr. Dallas Tring was glad to have acocmplished 
his duty, which was not spontaneous, but had been 
impressed upon him by his wife. Left to himself he 
would have said: " Say, that was good of you. I'd 
have been cut up if anything had happened to the 
kids." 

His wife not having warned him how to proceed, 

148 



I POSE 

he began now to talk about the banana crops. It 
was only towards the end of the interview that he 
risked himself once more upon the quicksands of emo- 
tion. 

" Look here, you know, it's altogether unspeak- 
able — what I owe you. Those are the only chil- 
dren we have. Aitch is a fine boy, don't you think? " 

" Fine," agreed the gardener, relieved to be al- 
lowed a loophole of escape from, " Not at all." 

" You're a fine boy yourself," added Mr. Tring. 
" When you get well, will you come and help me? " 
• "What to do?" 

" To start again." 

" Oh, yes," replied the gardener. " I love start- 
ing again. What I never can do is to go on." 

After this the gardener, considered to be stronger, 
was allowed to see Mrs. Rust again. She was now 
but little better than a fretful echo of Courtesy. 

Some people seem born to walk alone, and others 
there are who are never seen without a group behind 
them. Courtesy was as far a leader of men as can 
be compatible with having no destination to lead 
them to. She never knew what it was to be without 
a " circle." Acquaintances were as necessary to her 
as air, and she used them, as she used air, innocently 
for her own ends. 

Mrs. Rust never attained to the dignity either of 

being alone or the leader of a group, though she 

worshipped independence. She believed she had 

bought precedence of Courtesy for X200 a year. 

149 



I POSE 

And on the occasion of this visit to the gardener, 
she beheved that she was about to shock and sur- 
prise that wise young man. 

" Do you know what I have done? " she asked, 
when she had to some extent overcome the nervous 
cautiousness of behaviour impressed upon her by the 
absent Courtesy. 

" I do not," said the gardener, whose gently ir- 
reverent manner towards her was his salvation in her 
eyes. " It's sure to be something that any one else 
would be ashamed of doing." 

Mrs. Rust bridled. " It was partly to annoy you 
that I did it," she said. " Because you dared to 
advise me not to. I have sent my son Samuel a 
cheque, so as to launch his hotel." 

" Rash woman," protested the gardener. " If 
you knew your son Samuel as well as I do " 

" I know he is my son, so he cannot be altogether 
a fool." 

The gardener bent his thick threatening eyebrows 

upon her. 

" Do you know what else I have done? " she con- 
tinued. 

" I tremble to think," replied the invalid. 
' " I have advertised for your suffragette in the 
Union Paper. Courtesy said what a mercy it would 
be if she should have got safely away and wouldn't 
come back, so I advertised, just to show that I dis- 
agreed. I never knew her name, so I described her 
appearance . . ." 

ISO 



I POSE 

" Her little size . . ." he said eagerly. " Her 
small and hollow eyes. Her darling-coloured hair 
that always blew forward along her cheeks . . ." 

" Well, I didn't put it like that," said Mrs. Rust. 

" She had such wonderful little hands," said the 
gardener, upon whom a sick-bed had a softening, not 
to say maudlin effect. " You could see everything 
she thought in her hands. They were not very white, 
but pale brown. You might have mentioned them. 
But she is obviously mine. Nobody could overlook 
that. Nobody could overlook her at all." 

" On the contrary," said Mrs. Rust, " she is a 
perfectly insignificant-looking young woman. And I 
am sure that she would strongly resent your de- 
scribing her as though she were a dog with your 
name on Its collar. She had sensible views about 
women." 

You have been Intended to suppose all this time 
that the suffragette had succumbed to the earthquake, 
but as she is the heroine — though an unworthy one 
— of this book, I am sure you have not been deceived. 
Loth as I am to admit that a friend of mine should 
have been so near to such an experience without reap- 
ing the benefit of it, I am obliged by tiresome truth to 
confess that she was never aware of the earthquake 
as an earthquake at all. 

She was in the train when It happened, a little 
Christian the Pilgrim, making her way through many 
difficulties up to the Delectable Mountains. Far off 
they stood, defying the pale sea and the pale plains, 

151 



I POSE 

shadowed mountains, each with its cool brow 
crowned by a halo of cloud. 

The train service in Trinity Islands is not their 
chief attraction. First, second, and third class alilvc 
may watch the vivid country from the windows, oth- 
erwise there is no compensation for rich or poor. 
The price of a first-class fare is supposed to guarantee 
your fellow-passengers matching yourself as nearly 
as possible in complexion; it also entitles you to a 
deformed wicker chair in a compartment that a cow 
would appeal against in the Home Country. The 
wiclcer chair, unsettled by its migratory life, amuses 
itself by travelling drunkenly around the truck, un- 
less you lash yourself to the door-handle with your 
pocket-handkerchief, or evolve some other ingenious 
device. 

The suffragette was always without inspirations in 
the cause of comfort. She was a petty ascetic, and 
never thought personal well-being worth the acquir- 
ing. Her body was an unfortunate detail attached 
to her; she resented its demands, and took but little 
more care if it than she did of the mustard-coloured 
portmanteau, another troublesome but indispensable 
part of her equipment. She put her body and the 
portmanteau each into a wicker chair in the train, 
and promptly forgot how uncomfortable they both 
were. 

(There is much fascination in the big world, but I 
think the most wonderful thing in it is the passing of 
the little bubble worlds that blow and burst in many 

152 



I POSE 

colours around you and me every minute of our lives. 
In a 'bus or at a ball, in a crowd around a fallen 
horse, meeting for a moment as reader and writer 
of a book, or shoulder to shoulder In church singing 
to a God we all look at with different eyes, these 
things happen and will never happen exactly that way 
again. How I wondered at the cut of your mous- 
tache, O stranger, how I wondered at the colour of 
your tie. . . . But your little daughter with the thin 
straight legs and the thin straight hair pressed to your 
side, her glorying face filled with the light of novelty, 
and prayed that drive to heaven might never cease, 
x^nd next to you was the girl who had just discovered 
the man by her side to be no saint, but a man. And 
he was trying by argument to recover his sanctitude. 
" But strite now, Mibel, I never dremp you'd tike It 
so 'ard. 'S only my bit of fun. . . ." There was 
the man In khaki, next to me, born an Idler, brought 
up a grocer's assistant, and latterly shocked into be- 
coming a hero. . . . There was the conductor, a 
man of twisted humour, chanting the words of his 
calling In various keys through the row of sixpences 
that he held between his lips, while the little bell at 
his belt tolled the knell of one ticket after another. 
... A little oblong world glazed In, ready to my 
hand. But I got out at the Bank, and the world 
went on to Hammersmith Broadway. . . . These 
things are, and never shall be again. The finest 
thing about life is its lack of repetition. I hate to 
hear that history repeats itself. My comfort is that 

153 



I POSE 

history Is never word-perfect In so doing. Fate has 
always some new joke up her sleeve. Sometimes the 
joke Is not funny, but certainly It is always new.) 

There were two Eves and an Adam In the world 
which evolved from chaos under the suffragette's 
eyes, as the train moved out of Union station. Also 
a dog. We are never told about Adam's dog, but I 
am sure that he had one, and that It wagged its tail at 
him as he awoke from being created, and snapped at 
the serpent, and did Its best to propitiate the angel 
with the flaming sword. 

Dogs seldom Ignored the suffragette. As a race 
they have either more or less perspicacity than our- 
selves — you may look at It as you will — and they 
seldom concur with the public verdict of humanity on 
Its own species. And in the suffragette a confiding 
dog was never disappointed, for she knew the exact 
spot where the starched buckram of one's ear Is sewn 
on to one's skull, on which It Is almost unbearably 
good to be scratched. 

This dog was the sort whose name Is always 
Scottle when he Is owned by the unenterprising. He 
wore his forelegs so short and so bent that he looked 
as though he were continually posing as being thor- 
oughbred. When he drew himself up to his full 
height, the under outline of his figure was about three 
Inches from the ground. When at leisure he walked 
broadly and foursquare, as a table would walk, If 
endowed with life; when speeding up, he cantered 
diagonally — forefeet together — hindfeet together 

154 



I POSE 

— no one foot moving independently of its twin. 

The sort of conversation that this dog and the 
suffragette immediately began did not prevent the 
latter's hearing the conversation that was woven by 
her fellow-passengers across the loom of the train's 
roaring. 

The fact that the dog's name was really Scottle 
should give you a clue as to his mistress's character. 
It was perhaps malicious of me to describe her as an 
Eve ; that would have made her blush. For she was 
very fully clothed in blue serge. It is almost impos- 
sible for the average woman to conduct the business 
of life except in blue serge. We travel in blue serge 
(thin for the tropics, thick and satin-lined for our 
native climate), we sit at our desk in blue serge, we 
meet our Deity or our stockbroker in blue serge, in 
blue serge we raid the House of Commons. Per- 
haps the root of the feminist movement lies in blue 
serge. If I were defended by a crinoline, or rustled 
in satin or gingham or poplin, I might have been an 
exemplary spinster in my sphere to-day. 

The other Ev^e, attired (for she was obviously 
cosmopolitan) in fawn tussore, occupied an undue 
fraction of the little universe. She was the sort of 
person whose bosom enters a room first, closely fol- 
lowed by her chin. Black eyes and a hooked Span- 
ish nose led the rear not unworthily. She intended 
to be looked at, and she hoped to be recognised as a 
notorious novelist. For she was a momentary nov- 
elist with a contempt for yesterday and no concern at 

155 



I POSE 

all for to-morrow. A public of a hundred thousand 
housemaids was all she asked. 

One of the virtues of men is that they are not In- 
tended for fancy portrayal. Why should one ever 
describe the outward surface of a man, unless he is 
the hero of one's book, or unless one is engaged to 
marry him? The particular Adam in this compart- 
ment comes under neither of these headings. He is 
copiously reproduced all over the world, but clusters 
thickest In Piccadilly. Possibly you see him at his 
best very far away from Piccadilly. There is some- 
thing that transfigures the commonplace In the fact 
of having kissed the very hem of the Empire's wide- 
flung robe. 

"I say. Miss Brown, how's Albert?" asked the 
young man. 

For the other occupants of the little world seemed 
mutually familiar. It occurred to the suffragette that 
Fate always threw her with people who knew each 
other and did not know her. 

Miss Brown, the Eve In blue serge, bridled. To 
all women so flawlessly brought up as Miss Brown, 
there exists a sort of electricity in the voice of man 
which sends a tremor across their manners, so to 
speak. 

" Albert, Mr. Wise, Is still very weakly. I some- 
times wonder whether I shall rear him. His mental 
activities, I am told, have outgrown his physical 
strength." 

The young man fanned himself. And indeed 

156 



I POSE 

mental activities sounded unsuited to the climate. 
The sun spilt square flames upon the floor through 
the window. The silhouette of the passing land- 
scape scorched itself across the sky-line. Tattered 
bananas looked like crowds of creatures struck mad 
by a merciless sun. 

The voice of the lady novelist seemed to reach the 
suffragette through a veil. 

" That child will make his mark. He has the 
most marvellous mental grasp . . ." 

Two hills to the northwest moved apart in the 
middle distance, like the curtains from a stage. And 
there was Union Town lying white beside her sea, 
white, but veiled by her green gardens. Port King 
George, on an attenuated isthmus, stretched its par- 
allel form along to shield the mother coast from the 
Atlantic. Even from here you could see the white 
gleam of the ocean's teeth, as they gnashed upon the 
reef. A spike of calm steel water lay between Union 
Town and her defending reef. The suffragette 
thought: " A skeleton in the grass with a sword be- 
side it . , ." She also looked at the toy figure of 
the Caribbcania, so close to land as to be disguised as 
part of the island. Her two funnels mingled with 
the factory chimneys by the wharf. 

" But he is sure to have landed by now," thought 
the suffragette. She felt unsentimentally interested 
in the fact. It was too hot to feel more. 

" T happened to mention the Book of Genesis," 
said the lady novelist. " And Albert produced a 

157 



I POSE 

most ingenious theory about the scientific explanation 
of the fable of creation. I wish I had such a nephew. 
What a marvellous link with the coming genera- 
tion! " 

" On the other hand," said Mr. Wise, " I hap- 
pened to mention AUce in fVonderland, and he said it 
was out of date, and, as a dream, most improbable." 

" I am sorry he criticised the Bible in your hear- 
ing," apologised Miss Brown. " I am afraid he has 
a tendency towards irreverence." 

" I wish he had," muttered Mr. Wise. 

Acres of sugar filed past the window. High 
waved the proud crests of it, all innocent of its mean 
latter end as a common comestible. The suffra- 
gette's mind laboured under a rocking confusion of 
green tufted miles, — and somewhere on the outskirts 
of her thoughts, a little sallow Albert entrenched be- 
hind an enormous pair of spectacles. 

" A glorious child," said the lady novelist, in her 
monopolising tones. " Simply glorious. Quite an 
experience to have met him." 

"Good copy, eh?" grinned Mr. Wise. 

" Excellent. You know I collect copy." 

Now the suffragette collected copy, but she did it 
without self-consciousness. There are several kinds 
of copy-collectors. Some of us squeeze our copy 
into little six-shilling novels, or hack it into so many 
columns for the benefit of an unfeeling press. Some 
of us live three-score years and ten, and then wake 
suddenly to find our copy-coffers full. Upon which 

158 



I POSE 

we become bores, and our relations hasten to engage 
a paid companion for us. But some of us carry our 
lives about with us sealed up in our holy of holies, 
and take pride in hiding the precious burden that we 
bear. Copy-collecting may become a religion; to the 
suffragette, who never put pen to paper for any one 
else's benefit, and who never told an anecdote, this 
pursuit was the great consolation for a bleak life. 
At the gate of death, or on the step of Paradise, such 
a soul may be found filling Its pockets with the gold 
of secret experience. I think the mania is most acute 
when no thought of eventual print intrudes. Its 
most encouraging characteristic to the lonely is the 
sense of irresponsibility it brings. After all I may 
go and turn cart-wheels down the Strand, I may mur- 
der you, or throw my last shilling into the Thames, I 
may go halfway to Hell, and if I miscalculate the dis- 
tance and fall in — it's all copy. To the lady nov- 
elist, however, copy was but a currency to spend. 
Every experience in her eyes formed a part of a 
printed page, surrounded by a halo of favourable re- 
views. She never wrote a letter without an eye on 
her posthumous biography, never met a notable indi- 
vidual without taking a mental note for the benefit of 
a future series of " Jottings about my Generation." 
Both she and the suffragette kept diaries, but only the 
suffragette's had a lock and key. 

The engine was approaching the climax of its daily 
task. It faltered. Looking out of the window, Mr. 
Wise described Its arrival at the foot of a pronounced 

159 



I POSE 

hill. The engine gazed up the perspective of its 
duty, and panted prophetically, as pants an uncle 
before a game of stump-cricket. 

" This hill is always a surprise to the engine," said 
Mr. Wise. " Every day it has two or three tries, 
and yet it never learns the knack." 

The suffragette's fingers tore at the arm of her 
chair. It was not only too hot to travel, it was also 
much too hot to cease to travel. She felt a crisis ap- 
proaching. 

Her window had stopped artistically opposite a 
little slice of distant world, carved out between the 
trunks of two great cotton trees. Union Town, per- 
ceptibly diminished since its last appearance, lan- 
guished again around its bay. Against the white 
water you could see the cathedral and the factory 
chimneys, the spires of God and the spires of mam- 
mon. 

The suffragette, as she looked, saw the cathedral 
spire cock suddenly awry and bend over, like a finger 
in three joints. 

" The heat," she thought. " I beheve I'm dy- 
ing." 

Almost at once after that the train suffered a great 
spasm, as though yearning for the top of the hill. 

" She's going to try again," said Mr. Wise. 

The suffragette's head cocked suddenly awry, she 
bent over in three joints like a finger, and slid off her 
chair In a faint. 

A prostrated suffragette is a contradiction In terms. 

1 60 



I POSE 

This one became a child, lying in ungraceful angles, 
in need of its mother. 

" By Jove! " said Mr. Wise. Miss Brown, after 
lifting up her skirt carefully, knelt upon her petti- 
coat. 

An ebony ticket-inspector rushed into the compart- 
ment. 

" UU right ! UU right ! " he shouted. " Ull ovah ! 
Nobuddy killed ! " 

" Certainly not," said Mr. Wise. " Why should 
they be ? Only a faint." 

" Earthquake, sah, earthquake ! " yelled the in- 
spector. " Jes' look at the steeple daown in 
taown ! " 

There was no steeple to look at. 

" My — what an eventful journey! " said the lady 
novelist. 

" Poor little thing," said Miss Brown to the suffra- 
gette, in almost human tones. " Better now, better 
now?" 

The suffragette began to struggle a little. Even 
had she been in her grave, I think pity would have 
aroused a spark of militant protest in her bones. 

" Tell her to make an effort," said the lady novel- 
ist, who had never in her forty years been guilty of 
physical weakness. *' Pretend not to notice her. 
Probably hysteria." 

This well-worn accusation touches a familiar chord 
in the ear of any rebel. It opened one of the suffra- 
gette's eyes. She had black eyebrows which sug- 

i6i 



I POSE 

gested that she might have fine eyes, but she had not. 
When her eyes were shut you only saw the hopeful 
suggestion. 

" Come, come," said Miss Brown, handing Mr. 
Wise's brandy flask back to him, and becoming aware 
that her petticoat was bare to the gaze of an unmar- 
ried gentleman and a negro inspector. " Might I 
trouble you to lift the young lady on to a chair? " she 
added, as she rose. 

Seven stone of political agitator takes but little 
time to move. 

" A most eventful journey," said the lady novelist. 

Miss Brown, now decently seated on a chair, 
stroked the suffragette's hand. " Are you going to 
friends, my child? " she asked. 

" No, enemies, I expect," said the suffragette 
drearily. 

"Where?" 

" I don't know." 

" You must know where you are going," said the 
novelist severely. 

" Booked to Greyville," said the inspector, who 
had picked up her ticket, and was thoughtfully clip- 
ping It all over. 

" Do you know any one in Greyville? " asked Miss 
Brown. 
. " No." 

" Were you going to an hotel? " 

" I suppose so." 

1 62 



I POSE 

Some kind deeds are so obvious that they are im- 
possible to escape. 

" Albert can move into the back room," said Miss 
Brown. 

And the train, as if relieved to have this affair set- 
tled, moved on up the hill. 

By the time the chapel bell, which Island engines 
always wear, had begun to sound its warning to the 
pigs upon the line at Greyville Junction, the suffra- 
gette's independence was a thing dissolved. Her 
protests had no weight. Constitutionally she was 
unable to be politely firm. She must either be mil- 
itant or acquiescent; she knew not the half measures 
of civilisation. And it was impossible to be militant 
in the face of Miss Brown's impersonal sense of duty. 

" If only she had been a more interesting person 
this might have been like the beginning of a novel," 
murmured the lady novelist to Mr. Wise. That 
young man, who was wearing the sheepish look 
peculiar to the Englishman in the presence of matters 
which he considers to be feminine, shrugged his 
shoulders. 

At Greyville station Miss Brown emerged like an 
empress from incognito. A black coachman, with 
so generous an expanse of teeth that you suspected 
them of being the only line of defence between you 
and the inner privacies of his brain, was on the plat- 
form. He seemed torn between acquired awe of 

Miss Brown, and an innate desire to conduct the wel- 

163 



I POSE 

come heartily. The station-master bowed. The 
porter chirruped to Scottie. 

"New visitor, missis?" gasped the coachman, 
looking at the suffragette. He had taken some time 
to assimilate the visitorship of the lady novehst. 
His mind was being educated at too great a speed. 

" Gorgeous fellow," said the lady novelist, who 
considered all black people gorgeous because they 
were not white. The conversation of John the 
coachman had already filled two note-books, though 
he had never said anything original in his life. 

There is so much superfluous sunshine in Trinity 
Islands that splashes of it have been lavished upon 
all sorts of unnecessary details, the lizards, and the 
birds, and the self-conscious orchids roosting in the 
trees. Some of it has even been rolled into the 
roads, making them white and merry and irrespon- 
sible. The buggy horses feel the tingle of it, for 
they seldom walk; although the Creator speciaHsed 
in hills on Trinity Island. 

Down from some lofty market came the peasant 
women; their children, their donkeys, their tawdry 
clothes, trappings and merchandise, soaked with sun. 
Fantastic in outline, fairies of a midsummer day's 
dream, the little donkeys capered on spindle legs, 
bestridden by wide panniers, and by the peasant 
women, riding defiantly hke brigands, with bandanas 
round their heads, and sun-coloured draperies. 

It is curious that fashion has not yet decreed a 

164 



I POSE 

mania for dyeing one's complexion mahogany, that 
one might wear flame-colour with impunity. 

The buggy scattered the marketers. The Island 
horse, a plebeian creature of humble stature, seldom 
meets with the luxury of feeling superior. But the 
Island donkey is nothing but a door-mat on four legs, 
clogged red with the hectic mud of its mother land. 
A cheap-jack's pony would feel a prince beside it. 

Mr. Wise, who had been met at the stn.tion by a 
very small brown boy with a very tall brown horse, 
had cantered away in another direction, with a mes- 
sage of greeting to Albert, the sincerity of which 
Miss Brown had possibly overrated. 

A bungalow crouched behind a copper-coloured 
hedge upon the sky-line. Two cotton trees surveyed 
it, one on each side. A drive of the violently am- 
bitious kind shot at an impossible angle up to its door- 
step. 

" That is Park View, my home," said Miss Brown. 

" Of course, as your dog's name is Scottie," mur- 
mured the suffragette. 

Miss Brown looked surprised. The poor suf- 
fragette's attempts at polite interchange of fatuities 
never seemed to meet with the usual fate of such 
efforts. Her trivialities somehow always fell upon 
silence; if she ventured on the throwing of a light 
bridge over a gap in the conversation, it seemed to 
snap communication instead of furthering it. She 
was, of course, unlucky, but she was also, it must be 

165 



I POSE 

admitted, too earnest in intention for petty inter- 
course. She tried too hard. 

The buggy, commending its springs to the mercy 
of Providence, charged the drive of Park View. 

On the door-step, carefully posed, Albert was read- 
ing a very large book. He started laboriously as 
the buggy approached, and placed the book under 
his arm, taking care that the title should be visible. 
An emaciated child, with manners too old, and 
clothes too young, for his years. 

" I have dot hissed you at all, Ah-Bargaret," said 
Miss Brown's genial nephew. " I have been too 
idterested id by dew book od Chebistry. I ab quite 
sorry you have cob back." 

" Chemistry," retailed Miss Brown to the lady 
novelist. " A child of ten. And — did you no- 
tice, he was so deep in his book, he got quite a start 
when we arrived." 

Albert, at Park View, met with that appreciation 
of his poses which we all hope to meet in heaven, 

" Albert, you are to move into the back room," 
said Miss Brown. 

"Why?" asked Albert. 

" To make room for this lady." 

" Priceless child," said the lady novelist in brackets. 

" Because she needs somewhere to rest," said Miss 
Brown in a voice of tentative reproof. 

" But so do I." 

" I had better move into the back room myself, 
then," sighed his aunt. 

i66 



I POSE 

The suffragette began those hopeless protests 
which make the burden of an obhgation so heavy. 
It is so very much easier as well as more blessed to 
give than to receive, that the wonder is that gener- 
osity should retain the name of a virtue. Up to a 
certain point we are all altruists, because it is too 
much trouble to be otherwise. 

Albert, who, having gained his point, was once 
more comparatively genial, prepared to bring the suf- 
fragette to his feet. 

" I expect you are wudderig what is the dabe of 
the book I ab readig," he suggested to her as she 
stepped shakily from the buggy. 

" No, I was not," she replied gently. " I'm 
afraid science bores me." 

" Wha-t a lot you biss," observed the child. 
*' You probably spedd your precious time id dancig, 
ad dressig yourself up, ad bakig berry. How buch 
better " 

*' Albert," said his aunt, " this lady is tired and 
waiting to pass." 

" Yes, but I ab speaking to her." 

The suffragette smiled at him, and gave him her 
portmanteau to carry. 

The earthquake at Union Town had shot the most 

lurid rumours into Greyville. All the Park View 

servants had suddenly gone to church. The whole 

village was enjoying an impromptu half-holiday. 

The triangular village green, which held Greyville 

together and formed the pedestal of the Court-house, 

167 



I POSE 

echoed with news at every stage of exaggeration. 
One of the mildest rumours was that Union Town 
had fallen into the sea. It was said on the highest 
authority that the Devil had run along the streets, 
throwing flames right and left. No actual news ar- 
rived, the sources of news being wrecked, but 
towards evening all the Americans whose cars had 
survived the ordeal suddenly invaded the hills, suf- 
fering from nerves and a lack of luggage. 

Miss Brown says she does not believe in doing a 
thing unless you do it thoroughly. She says this as 
If it had never been said before; she propounds it as 
one propounds a revolutionary theory. But unlike 
most theory makers, she always translates such boasts 
into action. She performed the feat of keeping a 
militant suffragette in bed for the rest of that day. 

The suffragette lay and imagined the gardener and 
the earthquake at different stages of contact. She 
thought of him fighting to get out of a falling house, 
and her eyes shone. She thought of him with his 
head bound up, and wriggled where she lay. She 
thought of him unhurt, walking with his usual gait 
as though he were marching to a band, and this 
thought left her neutral. She never thought of him 
dead. 

She never believed in death either as a punishment 
or a reward. She had either lost the art of faith, or 
else she had never found It. She pictured death as 
a blink of the eyes, as an altering of the facet turned 

1 68 



I POSE 

towards life, never as a miracle. She was the only 
person I ever knew who honestly looked on death as 
unworthy of contemplation. 

Of course if a friend steps round a corner, you lose 
sight of that friend. But you must get used to the 
windings of the road. If you are a suffragette, you 
have to be your own friend. You must not stretch 
out your hands to find the hands of another; you 
must keep them clenched by your side. On the other 
hand, even a suffragette is human — (I daresay you 
have doubted this) — and my suffragette was only 
a little less human than you or I. The fact must 
stand, therefore, that when she thought of the gar- 
dener in pain, she forgot to clench her fists. 

It may still be a mystery to you why the suffragette 
should expend ingenuity in running away from her 
only friend. 

If you are a rebel of thorough nature, you believe 
that your cause is such a good cause that no supporter 
can be worthy of it. And, in the effort to reach 
worth, you may possibly arrive, step by step, at the 
Theory of the Hair Shirt, to which my suffragette 
had attained. For in throwing her little weight on 
the side of the best cause she could see, she cowed: 
*' All my life long to discard everything superfluously 
comfortable or easy. To despise peace, and to love 
loneliness . . ." 

This is the texture of the Hair Shirt worn beneath 

the armour of a rebel. You may call it hysteria. 

169 



I POSE 

And perhaps you are perfectly right. But perhaps 
there are even better things than being perfectly 
right. 

The night on the Island falls as abruptly as though 
he who manages the curtain had let go the string by 
mistake. 

With the night came a trayful of supper for the 
suffragette, and with the supper came Albert, not of 
course in the useful role of supper purveyor, but only 
as an ornament. 

" This earthquake Id Udlod Towd seebs to have 
beed quite a catastrophe." 

" Quite," agreed the suffragette. 

" I caddot picture ad earthquake," continued 
Albert. " I suppose doboddy cad picture such ad 
urheard-of disaster." 

" I can," said the suffragette. " I expect my pic- 
ture is all wrong, but It's certainly there. I see It red 
and grey, which is the most vicious discord I know." 

"Red ad grey?" repeated Albert. "Why red 
ad grey? What for Idstadce is red, ad what grey? " 

" Why," said the suffragette rather lamely, " I 
suppose the quaking Is red, and the pain grey." 

" You seeb to be talking dodsedse," said Albert, 
with creditable toleration. " I expect the flabes are 
red, ad the sboke grey. However, go od with your 
picture." 

" I think the world would suddenly give a lurch 
to one side, and you would wonder what had hap- 
pened, and why you felt so sick. Before you realised 

170 



I POSE 

anything else you would notice a sort of dazzle of 
chalk-white faces all round you." 

" The people are dearly all degroes id Udiod 
Towd." 

" Then you would understand, but still you 
wouldn't believe that this thing was really happening 
to you. You would see the houses curtsey sideways 
in a leaping dust, and a house front, with its windows, 
all complete, would shoot across the street with an 
unbearable roar, pricked by cracking noises . . ." 

" Why would it dot fall od you? " 

" Because things don't. And there would be a 
great chord of screams. And men running a few 
yards this way or that, and then back again, yelping, 
with lighted pipes still in their mouths . . ." 

" What ad ugly picture. How cad you see it all 
so clearly? " 

" I hav^e been thinking all day — of a friend of 
mine, who must have seen it. I don't expect an 
earthquake is a pretty thing, although there is some- 
thing beautiful about any curious happening." 

" I doad't agree with you," said Albert. *' There 
are oadly a few beautiful thigs. Roses ... ad 
sudsets ... ad love . . ." 

" Really, Albert," protested the suffragette, " what 
do you know about love ? " 

" Well, if it cobs to that — what do you dow about 

earthquakes? I cad picture love, easily. A bad, 

kissing a girl, udder a cocoadut palb . . ." 

" Nonsense," exclaimed the suffragette, bounding 

171 



I POSE 

so violently in her bed as to cause a serious storm in 
her soup. " Kissing's not love. Everything that 
was ever said or written about kissing, I think, must 
have been said or written by a man. It's only an- 
other of their tyrannies, to which, for the sake of 
love, women have had to submit." 

" You sowd like a suffragette whed you talk like 
that," mocked Albert. 

" No wonder," she replied. *' I am one." 

Albert looked shocked to find himself in the pres- 
ence of such a monstrosity. He went at once to 
warn his aunt. And she replied: " It doesn't mat- 
ter, Albert dear, she's only staying a few days, till she 
is well enough to make other plans." 

The suffragette, left to her cooling soup, reviewed 
her theories and her practice. 

"What's the good of being hard?" she asked 
herself, " if you are not hard enough? Either you 
are harder than the world and can bruise it, or the 
world is harder than you and bruises you. There 
is no point in just having a hard crust. As well be 
dough." 

In the middle of the night there was a loud wail 
from Albert's room. The suffragette, whose room 
adjoined his, was the first on the spot. 

" I seeb to have a bad paid,'* cried Albert, who was 
always cautious In his statements, " id the heart. It 
feels like cadcer, I thigk." 

" I don't think so," said the suffragette. " Per- 
haps you are only In love." 

172 



I POSE 

She went and knocked on Miss Brown's door. 

" But I doad't wadt Ah-Bargaret," said Albert, as 
his aunt came in. " I should hate to die lookig at 
Ah-Bargaret. I ab sure I ab going to die." 

" We'll see that you don't," said the suffragette, as 
she began to rub his side, his poor little ribs, fur- 
rowed like a ploughed field. 

*' But you are an invalid yourself," objected Miss 
Brown jealously. " You had better go back to bed." 

" Doh, she is dot ad idvalid, she's a suffragette," 
whined Albert. " I doad't wish her to go back to 
bed." 

Even Albert, with his wide range of scientific ways 
of being inconvenient, could scarcely have chosen a 
more impossible moment for an illness. Next day it 
became apparent that every doctor on the Island who 
had survived the disaster had plunged into the whirl- 
pool of its after effects. Nursing on the Island is in 
a rudimentary stage at all times, but what nurses ex- 
isted were not to be dragged now from Union Town. 

The lady novelist said: " I know I must appear 
heartless, dear Margaret, not to be helping to nurse 
him, but the sight of suffering gives me such acute 
pain. . . . It's not heartlessness, you see, it's that 
my heart is too tender." 

" I wish she would go to an hotel then," said the 
harassed Miss Brown to the suffragette. " She 
wants her meals so good and so regular, and I seem 
to hate the sight of food just now." 

It was against the suffragette's principles to hope 

173 



I POSE 

anything so desirable without translating her hope 
into action. It was also beyond her powers to be 
diplomatic. 

" I think you had better go to the hotel," she said 
militantly to the lady novelist. " You would be bet- 
ter fed there, and we should be more comfortable 
alone." 

" In that case perhaps I had better, not being wel- 
come In my friend's house," replied the novelist. " I 
was going to suggest it myself, as the sound of that 
priceless child's cries wrings my heart." 

The suffragette therefore gained her point at the 
expense of tact, which, as future historians will note, 
is a characteristic of suffragettes. 

Albert's temperament was not that of the Spartan. 
He never ceased to cry for a week. As for the pain, 
It was as if the god — whoever he may be — who 
Hkes little children to suffer, sat beside him, and with 
a blunt shears sliced off the top of each breath. 

There is a sword, a fatal blade, 
Unthwarted, subtle as the air, 
And I could meet it unafraid 
If I might only meet it fair. 
But how I wonder why the smith 
Who wrought that steel of subtle grain 
Should also be contented with 
So blunt and mean a thing as pain. . . . 

Albert clung to the suffragette, the straw in his sea 
of troubles. His constant wail rose an octave if she 
ventured from the room. 

174 



I POSE 

The only holiday she had during that first week 
was half an hour on the second evening of the ordeal, 
half an hour spent in carrying the lady novelist's 
majestic suit-case to the hotel. 

John the coachman could not do it, as the road to 
the hotel was infested with " duppies " after dark. 
The probability of meeting a " rolling calf " with a 
human head and green eyes, or the duppy of some 
regrettable ancestor, robbed even a tip of its splen- 
dour. 

The carrying of the suit-case was a physical impos- 
sibility to one of the suffragette's lack of muscle. 
But to her impossibility was only an additional 
" Anti " to fight, a rather worthier enemy than the 
rest. She believed in the power of the thought over 
the deed, that was her religion, and one is tempted to 
wonder whether any more complex belief is needed. 
Has it ever been proved that the human will, if rev- 
erently approached, is not omnipotent? 

At any rate the suit-case, borne by a thing that 
looked like the suffragette, but was in reality a super- 
suffragette created for the occasion, travelled to the 
hotel, unmolested by duppies, but followed by a liter- 
ary lady poisoned by injured pride. 

At the hotel were many Americans who said, " I 
guess " and " Bully " and " I should worry," and all 
the things that make a second-rate copy collector 
swell with copy and feel exquisitely cosmopolitan. 
This collector's diary began to overflow to three or 
four foolscap sheets a day, closely covered with dia- 

«7S 



I POSE 

logues on trivial subjects by very ordinary American 
husbands and fathers; all Americanisms underlined 
and spattered with liberal exclamation marks. 

At the end of the second week of the lady novel- 
ist's stay at the hotel arrived a millionaire, who im- 
mediately became the gem of the collection. He 
was exactly modelled on the stock millionaire to be 
met with in the pages of the comic papers. He was 
lean, self-made, and marvellously dressed; he wore 
eyeglasses and a little stitched-linen hat tilted over 
them. Also the beard of a goat. At the very out- 
set he expressed himself, " Vurry happy to meet you, 
madam, always happy to meet any of our neighbours 
from across the duck-pond." It was almost too good 
to be true. The novelist followed him about, so to 
speak, with fountain pen poised. 

His conversation was almost entirely financial. 
Neither the lady novelist nor I understand such mat- 
ters well enough to write them down, but only I am 
wise enough not to try, 

" Do you mind if I say you are a treasure ? " asked 
the lady novelist, after listening for an hour to a dis- 
sertation on Wall Street. 

" Not at all, ma'am," replied the millionaire po- 
litely, and drew breath to continue his discourse. 
But he rewarded her by descending to the level of 
her intelligence. 

" Say, talking of money, I guess there've been 
more fine opportunities lorst in Union Town this 
last fortnight, than ever I missed since I commenced 

176 



I POSE 

collecting the dollars. Would you believe me — 
there's a fellow, by name Dallas Tring, who's in- 
herited the only flour dee-pot in Union Town. Un- 
cle's orfice crumpled in on Uncle during the quake, 
and left Tring his fill of dollars right there for the 
picking up, so to speak. Union Town wants flour 
at this crisis, and if it was mine I'd say that Union 
Town, or the British Government, had darn well 
got to pay for it. We don't calc'late in hearts, this 
side of heaven, but in hard dollars. Philanthropy's 
a fool-game." 

" You are simply priceless," said the lady novelist. 
" Please go on." 

" I'm going right on, ma'am," said the treasure. 
" Would you believe me, this Tring e-volves a sys- 
tem (save the mark) by which he gives away this 
flour — gives it away, mind you, gratis, free, for 
nothing, with a kiss thrown in if required, to any 
nigger cute enough to rub his little tummy and say 
he's feeling empty. You may reckon I just couldn't 
quit Union Town without a call to see if the man was 
an imbecile or what. I found a young cub with a 
curly smile playing around in the orfice. Say, what 
do you suppose he answered me when I told him 
' Good-morning, and what's this sentimental money- 
chucking, anyway? ' " 

" I am dying to know," said the lady novelist. 

" Said it was the foyrst time he'd ever been led 

to think there might be something in sentiment after 

all. I was fair rattled." 

177 



I POSE 

The young cub with the curly smile, as you may, 
with your customary astuteness, have guessed, was 
the gardener. He had assumed the pose of phi- 
lanthropist, which, when conducted at some one else's 
expense, is one of the most delightful poses conceiv- 
able. The pleasure to be found in helping the dirty 
destitute seems to need an explanation beyond the 
plea of altruism. There is a real charm in dom- 
ineering to good purpose. To say unto one man Go 
and he goeth, and to another Come and he cometh, 
is at all times pleasant, but when such a luxury as 
autocracy becomes a virtue, there are few who dis- 
regard its glamour. 

The gardener's broken leg recovered as quickly 
as any leg could have done. He had an enthusiastic 
and healthy attitude towards suffering and illness, 
an attitude which he took instinctively, and which 
mental scientists and faith-healers try to produce ar- 
tificially. He was always serenely convinced that 
he would be better next day. He lived in a state 
of secret disappointment in to-day's progress, and 
unforced confidence in to-morrow's. He might be 
described as a discontented optimist; though often 
convinced that the worst had happened, he was al- 
ways sure that the best was going to happen. Con- 
versely, of course, you can be a contented pessimist, 
happy in to-day, but entirely distrustful of to-mor- 
row. 

To the gardener's methods may perhaps be as- 
cribed the fact that in a fortnight he was able with 

178 



I POSE 

the help of a stick, and with the encouragement of 
Aitch and Zed, to walk about his room. His first 
excursion was to the window. 

The houses opposite had fallen in on their own 
foundations. One complete wall was standing 
starkly amid the mass. Portraits of the King and 
Queen and a text or two still clung to their positions 
against the stained and florid wall-paper. 

" Do you see that house that you just can't see, 
the other side of that wall? " asked Aitch. 

" Yes, I see," said the gardener. " I mean I just 
can't see." 

" That's where dead Uncle Jonathan lives," said 
Aitch. " He's left Father the flour in his will." 
How good of him. I hope it was a pretty one." 
Father said, ' There's a fortune there.' And 
Mother said, ' Oh, Dally, it's as if it was left in 
trust for poor Union Town.' " 

When the gardener next met Mr. Tring, he dis- 
covered how entirely sufficient for two are the opin- 
ions of one. 

" Of course Pm awfully lucky, in a way," said 
Mr. Tring. " It's a big inheritance, and hardly 
damaged at all by the earthquake. But at present, 
of course, it's all responsibility and no returns. I 
feel as if it's sort of left mc in trust for Union 
Town." 

" That's one way of looking at it," said Courtesy 

— surely the least witty comment ever invented. 

" I don't agree with you at all," said Mrs. Rust, 

179 






I POSE 

who now made this remark mechanically in any pause 
in the conversation. 

" You consider that Mr. Tring should pile up a 
big bill against the British Government? " suggested 
the gardener. 

" Stuff and nonsense," said Mrs. Rust. " I con- 
sider the niggers can eat — mangoes." 

" I sometimes wonder," said the gardener, 
" whether one has a duty to oneself. One feels as 
if one has, but I always — in theory — distrust a 
duty that pays." 

" Certainly one has a duty to oneself," said Cour- 
tesy. " Duty begins at home. That's in the Bible, 
isn't it?" 

" Most of the texts tell you your only duty Is to 
the man next door," said Mr. Tring, blushing. 

" I entirely disagree with you," said Mrs. Rust. 

Soon after this discussion Mr. Tring, inspired by 
his wife, produced a plan for the benefit of the gar- 
dener. 

" When this business is over we shall — I mean 
I shall be a rich man and a busy man. I need some- 
body young around. I'd like fine to buy your youth 
(his wife's words). What about being my secre- 
tary for the present? It might give you a start in 
Island business." 

" This is not a time for paid work," said the 
gardener, " with half the money on the Island gone 
to dust." 

" I take your meaning," said Mr. Tring. *' But 

I go 



I POSE 

in my opinion the time's all right. Good work's 
good work, whether it's honorary or not. I never 
liked the idea that there's something heroic in re- 
fusing money, making out that there's something 
mean in accepting it. If you help you help, and the 
help's none the worse if it makes you self-support- 
ing." 

The word " self-supporting" was a sharp and ac- 
cusing word to the gardener. Most of us privately 
possess certain words that search out the tender parts 
in our spiritual anatomy. The words " absolute 
impossibility," for instance, angered the suffragette 
to militant protest; the mention of " narrow-minded- 
ness " ruffled the priest's sensibilities; as for me, the 
expression " physical disability " hurts me like a 
knife. It may or may not be out of place to add 
that the effect on Courtesy — that practical girl — 
of an allusion to " banana fritters " was to make her 
feel sick. You may know people better by their 
weaknesses than by their strength. 

The word self-supporting, therefore, goaded the 
gardener into accepting Mr. Tring's offer. 

His stock of poses, though very wide in range, 
had not as yet extended as far as practical business, 
in black and white, hours ten to five daily. He had 
— I report it with disgust — a contempt for the pen 
as a business implement. He was himself an artist 
without expression, a poet caged; a musician in de- 
sire, he suffered from a mute worship of all art. 
And he believed that the pen was as sacred an in- 

i8i 



I POSE 

strument as the violin, or the palette. To make 
money by the pen in business was equal to fiddling 
on a kerb-stone, or designing picture post cards. 
These theories are pose-theories, of course, and un- 
tenable by the practical man. But some of the gar- 
dener's poses had crystallised into belief. He was, 
as you may have noticed, anything but a practical 
man. 

" Perhaps," said Mr. Tring, " you might be what 
my wife calls an ' out-of-doors secretary.' I have 
been officially asked to organise the distributing of 
the flour. Enquiries will have to be made. The 
niggers are awfully sly, you know; you'd have 
thought they'd be too silly to be sly." 

" I have noticed that the silly seem to be protected 
by Providence. Slyness seems to be given as a sort 
of compensation. Otherwise, of course, we should 
stamp out the silly, and a lot of valuable human 
curiosities would become extinct." 

" I take your meaning," said Mr. Tring. " That 
being so, if we found you a horse to ride about on, 
would you undertake the notification and examina- 
tion of the necessitous cases, the pruning away — as 
my wife would say — of the dishonest applicants." 

" I am a gardener," said the gardener. " I love 
interfering with nature. Mr. Tring, you are a most 
excellent friend to me. Thank you seems too little 
a word." 

There are only a few people to be met with who 
can do justice to such a thankless task as the expres- 



I POSE 

sion of thanks. Man under an obligation is always 
convinced that the conventional words are not 
enough, and tries to improve on them. This must 
always be a failure, howev^er, as improving on con- 
vention is a work that only genius can undertake 
with success. 

A horse was found for the gardener. He was 
what might be called an anxious rider, and Courtesy, 
after watching his first equestrian exhibition, went 
to some trouble to find him an elderly mare of sober 
propensities. Mounted upon this excellent creature, 
the gardener one morning threaded the little passes 
that had been made in and out of the crags of ruined 
Union Town. It was early. The Olympians had 
not yet begun to compound that horrible broth of 
sun and steam and dust which they brew daily upon 
the plains of the Island. The sun's eyes had not yet 
opened even on the most ambitious of the hills, but 
the sky was awake, and so clear that you might have 
thought you were looking through crystal at a blue 
Zion. The dew was laughing in the crushed gar- 
dens. Grey lizards with a purple bloom on them 
jumped from ruin to ruin over chasms of ruin. A 
humming-bird, looking as though its tail and beak 
had been added hurriedly out of the wrong box, 
stood in the air glaring into the open eye of a pas- 
sion flower. The air was shining cool. The songs 
of the birds were like little fountains of cold water. 

There is always a pessimistic gloom about the 

woods of the Island. The cotton tree, with its ashen 

183 



I POSE 

blasted trunk, looks as If It had known a bitter past. 
Logwood gives the Impression of firewood left 
standing by mistake. And the cocoanut palms, which 
are unstable souls, lean this way and that, as though 
glancing over their shoulders for their enemy the 
wind, against whom they have no defence. Only 
the great creepers throw cables of hope from tree to 
tree, and the orchids nestle blood-red against the col- 
ourless hearts of the cotton trees. 

The huts for the homeless had been built in a 
wide clearing In the woods, only divided from the 
sea by the road, a belt of palms, and a frill of sand 
so white that the word white sounded dirty as you 
looked at It. The rocks leant out of opal water 
Into pearl air. A pensive pelican, resting its double 
chin upon Its breast, stood waiting on a low rock. 

The gardener dismounted with great care. A 
person of three summers or so came to watch him 
do it. The only thing she wore that nature had not 
from the first provided her with was a halr-rlbbon. 
Her head looked like a phrenologist's chart. It 
was mapped out In squares by multiplied partings 
at right angles to each other. From every square 
plot of wool sprang a rigid plait of perhaps one 
Inch In length. On the highest plait was a scarlet 
halr-rlbbon. The effect was not really beautiful, 
but suggested a beautiful maternal patience. The 
person thus decorated was gnawing a piece of bread. 

" That bread," thought the gardener, who In 

flashes posed as Sherlock Holmes, " must have been 

184 



I POSE 

made with flour. That flour probably came from 
Tring's, Where did you get that bit of bread, 
Miss?" he added. 

The person, determined not to appear to over- 
look a joke for want of an effort, gave a high fat 
chuckle, and danced the opening steps of a natural 
tango. The gardener, unwilling to shatter the illu- 
sion of his own humour, did not repeat the question. 
He gave the elderly mare in charge of not more than 
a dozen little boys. It was an insult to the mare, 
a creature with a deep sense of responsibility, who 
could much more reasonably have taken charge of 
the little boys. 

" Dat Mrs. Morra's pickney," said one of the 
older boys, with a polite desire to effect an introduc- 
tion between the gardener and the dancing person. 
On hearing herself thus described, Mrs. Morra's 
pickney at once led the way at great speed to Mrs. 
Morra. Now Mrs. Morra's was the first name on 
the gardener's list of applications. 

She was discovered outside the door of her hut, 
submitting the head of an elder daughter to that 
process of which the coiffure of the younger was a 
finished example. The conversation was punctured 
by wails from the victim. Wool does not adapt it- 
self to painless combing. 

" Good morning, Mrs. Morra," said the gar- 
dener, with his confiding smile. Mrs. Morra 
screamed with amusement. 

*' I hear the earthquake knocked down your home 

185 



I POSE 

and didn't leave you anything to live on. You asked 
for some of the free bread, didn't you? The police 
gave us your name." 

" P'leece? " questioned Mrs. Morra, who seemed 
amused by the mention of her necessity. " Whe' 
dat, please? " 

*' The police — the big man in blue," said the gar- 
dener, before he remembered that on the Island the 
police was always a little man in white. 

"P'leece?" persisted Mrs. Morra. 

"The policeman — the law," said the gardener 
desperately. 

Every nigger is familiar with the law. Going to 
law is a vice that on the Island takes the place of 
drink. The nigger's idea of heaven is a vast court- 
house, with the Almighty sitting at a desk awarding 
him damages and costs. 

"Oh, de law — de polizman, please sah," said 
Mrs. Morra. 

" Right. Now how did your little girl get this 
bread?" 

" Beg a quattie from a lady, please," said the 
mother. 

" Yes, but where did she buy the bread when she 
had the quattie. Bread is free now, you can't buy 
it." 

" Bought it fim Daddy Hamilton, please, old man 
who live alone by himself across opposite. But he 
ha'n't got no more, please ! " 

" I'll go and see Daddy Hamilton," said the 

z86 



I POSE 

gardener. " How many children have you got, Mrs. 
Morra?" 

"Please?" 

" How many children? " 

"Please?" 

"How many pickneys?" said the gardener, in- 
spired. 

" Pickneys please thank you," said Mrs. Morra. 
" I got Dacia Maree Blanche Rosabel Benjum Teo- 
dor Lionel." 

" Seven," panted the gardener, who had kept care- 
ful count. 

" Tree, please sah," corrected the lady. 

" Me Dacia Maree," explained the victim of ma- 
ternal pride. 

" Have you a husband? " continued the gardener. 

" O la, no please sah." 

" A widow? " he suggested. 

Mrs. Morra shrieked with laughter. 

" Nebber had no m.an mo' dan tree monts," she 
said. "Dacia Maree's fader — he on'y stop a 
week. Benjum's dad bin in gaol two yahs. 
Blanche Rosabel — her fader was a brown man, her 
grand-dad was a buckra." 

The gardener blushed into his note-book. 

The police had certified that the family's means of 
subsistence had been swept away by the earthquake, 
and the gardener, by one glance into an unsavoury 
hut, satisfied himself that no luxuries had been 
saved from the wreck. He therefore noted the 

187 



I POSE 

case as needy, and asked his way to Daddy Hamil- 
ton. 

This gentleman, seated upon an upturned bucket, 
was studying a hymn-book through a pair of horn- 
rimmed spectacles. 

" God bless you, sah," he said in the loud unmis- 
takable voice of a joyous Christian. 

The gardener thanked him. 

" I see, Mr. Hamilton, that you told the police you 
had two married daughters whose husbands had been 
killed by the earthquake, and seven grandchildren 
dependent on you." 

*' Yessah. De Lawd giveth, an' de Lawd taketh 
away." 

" Certainly. And you had an emergency grant of 
several loaves of bread on Monday." 

" Praise be to God, sah, I did. De Lawd 
giveth " 

" On the contrary, in this case it was Mr. Tring 
that gave. Now, are either of your married daugh- 
ters or any of your grandchildren at home? " 

" No, sah. Dey all gone to chapel." 

" Really? Now there seems to be an idea among 
your neighbours that you live by yourself. How is 
it they have never noticed your two daughters and 
seven grandchildren? " 

" Dunno, sah. Deir eyes dey hab closed, lest at 
any time dey should see wid deir eyes, and hear wid 
deir ears " 

" Do the whole ten of you sleep in that little hut? " 

i8g 



I POSE 

*' No, sah, I sleep on de graound aoutside. Foxes 
hab holes " 

" Now, Mr. Hamilton, can you look me In the 
face and tell me that the bread that was given you 
was really eaten by yourself, and two daughters, and 
seven grandchildren?" 

" Yes, sah. To tell you de troot, sah, dey wasn't 
ezackly blood-grandchildren. All men are brudders, 
we are told, sah, and derefore grandchildren, an' 
daughters, an' nieces too, sah. All de pickneys call 
me Daddy Hamilton. Suffer de little children to 
come unto me, saith de Lawd, so I suffer dem 
gladly." 

" Yes, but do you ever charge anything for suffer- 
ing them? Have you ever sold any of the bread 
that was given you? " 

" Well, sah, a man mus' live." 

" Yes, but the bread was given you to live on." 

*' Well, sah, money is better dan bread. You ask 
for bread and dey give you a stone." 

" Not In this case. The bread was excellent. 
Do you know, Mr. Hamilton, I believe you are 
liable to be prosecuted for obtaining Mr. Tring's 
gift under false pretences." 

" No, sah, not false. I am a faitful sojer In de 
Lawd's army, sah, faitful an' joyful. Old Joybells 
dey call me." 

" Still, this time I'm afraid you stepped aside. 

I will ask Mr. Tring what he would like done 

about It. At any rate, you won't get any more 

189 



I POSE 

bread given you for the present. I'll see to that." 
" God bless you, sah. De Lawd giveth, an' de 
Lawd taketh away." 

All novelties are interesting to One Who is See- 
ing Life, but novelty is unfortunately an elusive 
phantom to pursue. After a fortnight spent in in- 
quiry, the gardener began to feel his heart sink at 
the mention of flour. He suffered from the gift of 
enthusiasm. In place of the gift of Interest, and en- 
thusiasm Is like the seed that fell upon stony ground, 
the suns of monotony scorch It quickly. To do the 
gardener justice, It must be admitted that there was 
very little left to do. Union Town was not very 
long In adjusting Itself to the emergency. Nigger 
huts are quickly built, and even the villas of the 
coffee-coloured aristocracy, the most serious sufferers 
from the disaster, are not the work of ages. The 
Post Office continued to lie upon Its face In the High 
Street, but the bare feet of the people soon trod a 
path around It. Government House remained hud- 
dled In a heap upon Its own cellars, but Governors, 
after all, are not human, and it makes but little differ- 
ence to the population to hear of its viceroy sleeping 
under canvas. 

In the gardener's mind, during the past fortnight, 
the suffragette had had Union Town as a serious 
rival. His vanity was a little hurt by her continued 
lack of appreciation of a great man. He would 
have liked, while still on crutches, to have met her 
searching among the ruins for him. So for a little 

190 



I POSE 

while he posed as being in love with his work. But 
when Union Town began to retire into the back- 
ground, the suffragette stepped forward into insist- 
ent prominence. She triumphed finally one night in 
the verandah of the St. Maurice Hotel, after dinner. 
It was a night without a flaw, every star spoke the 
right word, and the moon was a poem unspeakable. 
Fireflies starred the garden. 

The stars and fireflies dance in rings, 
The fireflies set my heart alight, 
Like fingers, writing magic things 
In flame upon the wall of night. 
There is high meaning in the skies 
(The stars and fireflies — high and low), 
And all the spangled world is wise 
With knowledge that I almost know . . . 

" I'll have to return to the search," said the gar- 
dener. 

" What for? " asked Courtesy, who always liked 
everything explained. 

" For the suffragette," he replied. " I'm tired of 
being respectable and in doubt." 

Luckily the priest had changed his table since 
Courtesy had changed her company. He sat at the 
far end of the verandah, with his back to every one. 
His righteousness had subsided to some extent since 
the earthquake, but he still looked on the gardener 
as a hopelessly lost lamb. Such a shepherd as the 
priest may yearn towards the lost lamb, but would 
rather not sit at the same table with it. 

" If you start that silly game again, gardener," 

191 



I POSE 

said Courtesy, " you'll have to throw over Mr. 
Twing's job. Why can't you leave the girl alone? 
She can't have been killed, because there are no 
white people left unidentified. Why can't you stick 
to one thing? " 

" I have no glue in me," replied the gardener. 
*' I'm glad of it; there could be nothing duller than 
sticking to one thing. Besides, there's nothing left 
to stick to. There was only half an hour's work to 
do yesterday, although I spent three hours over 
it." 

Mrs. Rust shot a fountain of tobacco smoke Into 
the air as a sign that she intended to speak. The 
priest liked Mrs. Rust, because his own tolerance of 
her vagaries made him feel so broad-minded. He 
liked to smile at her roguishly when she took a small 
whisky and soda; he liked to hand her the matches 
when she smoked; he liked to write to his sister at 
home : " One comes in contact with a worldly set 
out here, but if one is careful to keep one's mind 
open, one finds points of contact undreamt of at 
home in one's own more thoughtful set." If the 
gardener had been a drunkard instead of being in 
love, the priest would have liked him better. But 
the gardener posed as being a non-drinker and a 
non-smoker on principle. Really the taste of spirits 
or of tobacco smoke made him feel sick. 

" I am going to leave Union Town myself," said 
Mrs. Rust. " I know of a car I could hire to-mor- 
row. I will help you in your search, gardener, al- 

192 



I POSE 

though she strikes me as being a totally unattractive 
young woman." 

" We had arranged to go to the hotel in Spanish 
City next Wednesday by the nine train," said 
Courtesy in a reproachful voice; "and from there 
to Alligator Bay, and then in a car round the Island. 
I daresay other plans might be made, but you should 
have let me know sooner." 

" No plans need be made," said the gardener re- 
belliously. " We might just get the car, and start 
now in the cool." 

"Ass!" observed Courtesy simply. "Mrs. 
Rust's lace scarf won't be dry enough to iron till to- 
morrow. I will see whether we can start the next 
day." 

To disobey Courtesy was unthinkable. The gar- 
dener gritted his teeth at the stars, because he would 
have to see them again before he could start on his 
search. Now was the only time for the gardener; 
then hardly counted; and presently was a word he 
failed to acknowledge. 

" Anyway, you don't either of you know where to 
look for her," said Courtesy, that practical girl. 

"She'll be at Alligator Bay," said Mrs. Rust. 
" They've got a picture gallery there." 

" She'll be somewhere in the hills," said the gar- 
dener. " She would always go up." 

" I entirely disagree with you," retorted Mrs. 
Rust. 

" Anyway, it seems hot on sea-level," said 

193 



I POSE 

Courtesy. " We'd better go up to where it's sup- 
posed to be cool. I'm told the Ridge Pension, High 
Valley, has a good cook, but the New Hotel, at Grey- 
ville, is also well spoken of." 

Fortunately thirty-six hours, though they may 
stretch half-way to eternity, never succeed in cover- 
ing the whole distance. A moment arrived when 
the three, bristling with travellers' trifles, met the 
waiting car at the nearest spot In the ruined High 
Street to which cars could penetrate. And then fol- 
lowed a long series of dancing moments. Little vil- 
lage ports strung like beads along the coast; thatched 
huts thrown together by a playful fate; waterfalls 
like torn shreds of gauze draped on the nakedness of 
the hills; logwood plantations, banana plantations, 
sugar plantations, yam plantations . . . Then as the 
approaching hills began to usurp more and more of 
the sky, the road cut through a high and low land; 
hand in hand with a very blue river, it threaded a 
great grey crack in the island; high cliffs yearned 
towards each other on either side; a belt of pale sky 
followed the course from above. Then out into the 
sun and wild woods, with ferns and flowering trees 
beckoning beautifully from all sides. And then 
long hills, a road that doubled back at every hundred 
yards, with a great changing view, growing bigger, 
on the right hand or the left, as the course of the road 
decided. Little brown villages clung desperately to 

the hill-side; gardens of absurd size balanced them- 

194 



I POSE 

selves on almost perpendicular slopes; paths of red 
mud, disdaining the winding subterfuges of the road, 
sprang from angle to angle, like children playing at 
independence beside a plodding mother. 

Towards the afternoon a blue-black cloud crept 
suddenly over a summit, and emptied itself with 
passion upon the travellers. In a minute the water- 
proof hood of the car was proved unworthy of its 
name; the screen in front became less transparent 
than a whirlpool; the road went mad and believed 
itself to be a mountain torrent. The wet wrath of 
heaven began to make itself felt even down Mrs. 
Rust's neck. 

" This is disgraceful," said Mrs. Rust. " Cour- 
tesy, do something at once." 

No doubt Courtesy would have risen to the occa- 
sion, but for once Heaven was quicker. The sun 
suddenly shouldered its way round the intruding 
cloud, and made one great shining jewel of the world. 
Park View, that forward house, residence of the re- 
tiring Miss Brown, stood bold upon the skyline. 

The gardener's heart did not leap within him when 
he saw Park View. Only in books does Fate dis- 
guised stir the heart to such activity. In real life, 
when I stumble on the little thing that is to change 
my Hfe, I merely kick it aside, and hurry on. 

In case you should think that by bringing my 
travellers to Greyvillc I make the long arm of co- 
incidence unduly attenuated, I must add that there 

195 



I POSE 

are only two tourist centres on the hills of the Island 
— Greyville and High Valley — and that almost 
everybody visits both. 

The gardener was now posing as a Seeker, and in- 
stinctively his eyes took on the haggard look that 
belongs to the pose. As he mounted the steps of 
the New Hotel verandah, the lady novelist thought, 
" What an interesting young man! " When, how- 
ever, she saw Mrs. Rust's hair, her notebook trem- 
bled in her pocket. The Treasure had left, and as 
to the other Americans, she had practically drunk 
their cup of copy dry. 

" Charles," she said to the woolly black waiter 
when he brought her tea, " will you put those new 
people at my table? " 

" No, please, missis," replied Charles, who, be- 
ing a head waiter at seventeen, was suffering from 
the glamour of power. " Shall sit dem wid Mistah 
Van Biene." 

A fraction of the proceeds of the lady novelist's 
last novel, however, soon silenced the authority of 
Charles. 

And after all it was Mrs. Rust who sought ac- 
quaintance first, at breakfast in the cool verandah 
next morning. 

" There was a lizard in my bath," said Mrs. Rust. 
"Disgraceful! Why can't you exterminate your 
vermin? " 

This was hard on the lady novelist, who screamed 
for Charles whenever she saw anything moving any- 

196 



I POSE 

where, but she bore the injustice with a beautiful pa- 
tience. 

" What do you think of the Island in general? " 
she asked. " I can tell by your face that your opin- 
ion would be worth having." 

She might have added that she could tell this, not 
so much by Mrs. Rust's face as by her hair. 

" I don't think of the Island if I can help it," 
retorted Mrs. Rust after some thought, during 
which she sought in vain for some adequately star- 
tling reply. " That earthquake — on my first day — 
a revolting exhibition." 

" Oh, were you in Union for the earthquake? I 
am collecting the reports of intelligent people who 
were there. I am sure your adventures must have 
been worth recording." 

" On the contrary," replied Mrs. Rust, " the 
whole thing was absurdly overrated. My nerves 
remained perfectly steady throughout." 

The gardener, the only person who might have 
cast a doubt upon this statement, was not present. 
Still posing as the strenuous seeker, he had gone 
for a walk before breakfast. 

There is a great glitter about morning in the hills 

which drags the optimist for long walks in the small 

hours upon an empty stomach, and causes even the 

pessimist to attack his grape fruit at breakfast with 

a jovial trill. The little tables on the verandah of 

the New Hotel have a glamour of heaped bright 

fruit upon white linen. In the garden the tangerines 

197 



I POSE 

grow radiantly among their shining sober green, the 
butterflies blow across the pale young grass. There 
is a salmon-pink azalea, whose smile attracts the 
humming-birds, and a riotous clump of salvia. 
There is a benevolent John Crow, who strikes atti- 
tudes upon the roof of the annex, and stands for 
hours with his ragged wings spread open to the sun, 
as he surveys the diamond world. Really he is hop- 
ing that you will fall dead over your breakfast, but 
you lose this thought in the glitter of a hill morning. 
For the sake of your own peace of mind, never get 
close enough to a John Crow to see his gargoyle face. 
Content yourself with admiring his barbaric grace 
from a distance, and forget why he is there. 

Courtesy was characteristically still in bed. She 
never was one to hear the call of a singing world. 

The gardener came in with eyes crinkled by the 
sun, and his hair standing up In a spirited way all 
over the top of his head. Did you know that it is 
possible to be a specialist In posing without giving 
thought to the appearance ? 

" You look as if you had been fighting," snapped 
Mrs. Rust. " Disgraceful state of hair." 

" I wish I had," replied the gardener. " I could 
fight beautifully at this moment. I never knew 
what It was to breathe until this morning." 

" Air is Indeed a blessing" said the lady novelist. 
" I have a passion for air. I sometimes think I 
should die without It. How Interesting to meet any 
one who loves fighting. You ought to be a soldier. 

298 



I POSE 

I myself am a peace-loving woman, but I often have 
quarrels forced upon me." 

" Let me conduct them for you," suggested the 
gardener, wrestling with his grape fruit. " Show 
me the enemy." 

" I wish I could. I think I will," said the lady. 
" I came to Greyville to stay with a dear friend, and 
a young woman, of no standing whatever, picked 
up anyhow^ and anywhere, not only turned me out of 
my friend's house, but now insists on my moving 
two of my trunks from the sick-room." 

" Oh, there is a sick-room, is there? " 

" Yes, my friend's little nephew is ill." 

" But didn't your friend protest? Has the young 
woman a hypnotic power over her? " 

" My friend is very weak. The young woman is 
only a sort of second-rate children's nurse, appar- 
ently." 

" And do you want to go back there? " 

" No, I prefer to be here. But it is so undignified 
not to be consulted." 

" That's very true," said the gardener, whose in- 
terest was beginning to wane. 

" That road below is as crowded and as noisy as 
Piccadilly," said Mrs. Rust. " Disgraceful." 

" Market day," replied the novelist rapturously. 
" Such a blaze of colour. Such a babel of 
tongues . . ." 

" And so smelly, I am sure," said Mrs. Rust. " I 
am going to market." 

199 



I POSE 

" Let's all go to market," added the gardener. 

An hour had to be allowed for Courtesy to have 
her breakfast, and for Mrs. Rust to don her panama. 
Mrs. Rust, though not averse to startling any one 
of her own colour, had a secret distaste for the naive 
criticisms of the niggers on her strange hair. The 
Islanders were not aware that dyed hair was the 
apex of modern fashion; they looked upon it, poor 
things, as a deformity, and a most amusing one. 
Mrs. Rust had been obliged to invest in a perfect 
beehive of a ha^ for wear in such ignorant parts. 

So four more units joined the stream of marketers 
along the red road. In spite of Mrs. Rust's panama, 
the niggers laughed. Niggers always laugh unless 
they cry, and the lunatic ways of white women pro- 
vide a source of amusement that never fails, al- 
though white women have been on the Island for 
three hundred years. Some of the marketers ac- 
tually had to remove their baskets of fruit — 
crowned with boots — from their heads, to give free 
play to their sense of humour. Every nigger wears 
his boots upon his head. It is, I suppose, as much a 
disgrace not to own them as it Is a discomfort to wear 
them. 

The appearance of the market was like a maniac 
garden, and the sound of It was like a maniac rook- 
ery. By way of compensation to the niggers for 
their Individual ugliness. Providence has granted 
to them an unconscious beauty in the matter of group- 
ing themselves. A nigger by herself looks like a 

200 



I POSE 

comic picture post card, a lot of niggers together look 
like the picture that many master-hands have tried 
to paint. 

My senses tingle even now with the welter of 
sun and sound and smell and colour, that constitutes 
an Island market. 

" You meet every one in Greyville here," said 
the lady novelist to the gardener. " I will intro- 
duce you to the enemy." 

The gardener agreed absent-mindedly. He was 
helping Courtesy to buy baskets. The Island is the 
paradise of basket lovers. Those hearts are rare 
which do not thrill at the sight of a plaited basket in 
many colours, and I believe that nobody ever left 
the Island without succumbing to the charm. I sup- 
pose the reason why Island baskets never get on to 
the market at home is that everybody loves them so 
much, they never part with them. Courtesy, who 
always loved the popular thing, had been very busy 
buying baskets since the first moment of her ar- 
rival. 

Mrs. Rust was busily occupied in refusing to buy 
anything. "Buy a pine? Why should I? I 
loathe pines. Lace? No, I won't buy lace, my un- 
derclothes are already overcrowded with it. What's 
that? A basket to keep my letters in. I keep my 
letters behind the fire. Why, gardener — look — 
ere s 

" Mr. Gardener," tittered the novelist, " here is 
the enemy behind you." 

20I 



I POSE 



(( 



You dream," said the gardener, " I've been 
looking for you everywhere." 

With an amiable smile the suffragette allowed her 
hand to be shaken an enormous number of times. 
She was looking plainer than the gardener had ex- 
pected. With the pretty obtuseness of men, he had 
in his dreams forgotten that brown hat with the 
weary flowers in it. He had imagined her dressed 
in blue, he had thought her eyes were blue to match, 
he had created a little curl in her hair. Yet some- 
how he was not disappointed. For he had also for- 
gotten in his dreams the comfort that lies in lack of 
ornament. It isn't love that makes the world go 
round, it's the optimism of men. 

" Why, it's quite nice to see you again," said the 
suffragette in a voice of surprise. 

" Courtesy," shouted the gardener, " from this 
moment I'm not a fit companion for Mrs. Rust. 
Courtesy says I'm not respectable when I'm with 
you," he added to the suffragette. 

" I don't see anything very disreputable in your 
behaviour with me," she replied. " But it's only 
for a little while. Courtesy." 

" Oh, Lor', no," said Courtesy. " He's come to 
stop." 

" I haven't," said the suffragette. 

The gardener would never have put Into words 
the appeal that came into his eyes. 

" Yes," said the suffragette, " you are thinking 

202 



I POSE 

that I am growing more and more militant every 
time you see me." 

" I was not," he answered, " I was wondering how 
I could manage to see you apart from all this noise." 

" Quite easily. You can walk back to Park View 
with me now. I have got the oranges for Albert." 

So they squeezed out of the market-place, and side 
by side paced the avenue of donkeys which on market 
days lines the village street. 

"What are you waiting for?" asked the gar- 
dener. " What's wrong with me? When will you 
want me? " 

" It isn't you I don't want. It's what you stand 
for. Possibly I haven't mentioned to you that I am 
a suffragette of a special kind. A cat that walks by 
itself . . . Or rather perhaps it is presumptuous of 
me to lay claim to cathood. I have only walked 
such a little way. I am an elderly kitten, say, walk- 
ing by itself." 

*' But if all suffragettes were like you, it would 
certainly be an argument against the franchise. For 
what would become of England? " 

*' God forbid that all suffragettes should be like 
me. I am a fanatic, a rather silly thing to be." 

" I know what you are waiting for," said the gar- 
dener. "Heaven! you want so much beside the 
Vote, and you'll never get what you want this side of 
heaven." 

" God forbid that I should want heaven," said the 

203 



I POSE 

suffragette. " Heaven Is not made for women. 
Why, the very archangels are men." 

" Why won't you have me? We could get mar- 
ried to-morrow. Why not?" 

" Because I am too busy. Because there is a su- 
perfluity of women, and as I am not a real woman — 
only an idea — I'd better sit out. Because I am 
conceited and couldn't bear my pride to have a fall 
— at your expense. Because you don't know me and 
I don't know you. Because it's better to live alone 
with an ideal than coupled with a fact. Now I'm 
sick of talking about myself, it makes me feel sugary, 
as though I'd been swallowing golden syrup neat." 

" But before you retire into your militancy, tell 
me," said the gardener, " do you think you will ever 
recognise this bond between us? " 

" There is no bond between us." 

" There is love between us." 

" I'm sorry, but it's not mutual." 

*' Love is an automatically mutual thing." 

" Then I'm afraid that proves that whatever may 
be between us is not love. Here is Park View." 

" Damn Park View ! " 

Words are supposed to be a woman's luxury, but 
it always seems to me that men put a more touching 
faith in argument than ever women did. I believe 
the gardener thought that if Park View had been five 
miles farther on, he might have made a woman of 
the suffragette. 

204 



I POSE 

"And what do you expect me to do now?" he 
asked pathetically. 

" Get busy," advised the suffragette, " somewhere 
else. Dear little gardener, remember that this road 
has been trodden before. Being young is a devastat- 
ing time, anyway. It always comforts me to think 
that there are crowds before and behind me, and that 
even a cow has had a delirious calfhood. After all, 
the past is such a little thing, one can drown it in a 
drop. And the future is so big." 

" That's what I complain of — the size of the fu- 
ture." 

" Oh, no, don't. Size is space and space is 
growth. Good gracious, what a prig I am becom- 
ing!" 

" For God's sake, come and fill up a little corner 
of my big future, then. You little thing, I could 
hold you in my hand . . . And you can hold me with 
no hand at all, but only with your heart." 

" Good-bye." 

"But why? Why?" 

She was climbing the steep drive. She never 
looked round. She always looked up. 

With excellent intentions the suffragette had, I 
think, succeeded in killing her heart. She was so 
heartless that even the hole where her heart should 
have been was a very shallow one. Some rudi- 
mentary emotion turned in her breast as she walked 

up the drive, and if she could have had the gardener 

205 



I POSE 

as a friend, she would have turned even then and ten- 
dered him the friendly mailed fist of the independ- 
ent woman. But if one is a fanatic, one cannot also 
be a lover. She suffered from the cold humility that 
sometimes attacks women. Every morning she oc- 
cupied three minutes in the thankless task of pinning 
her hair into a shape conformable with convention's 
barest requirements, and was then confronted with 
her own thin short face, white — but not white like 
a flower as the face of a beloved woman should be; 
her small eyes, grey — but not grey like the sea; her 
straight and drooping hair, made out of the ashes of 
the flame that burns in real women's hair; her thin 
pressed lips, her hard set chin, the little defiant wrin- 
kles over her brows ... It was Impossible for her 
to believe that such a thing could be Indispensable to 
any eyes. Her attitude towards the paradox was 
always sceptical, and the idea that there is nothing a 
woman can ofi^er as a substitute for such a small gift 
as herself was beyond her. The little ordinary fiery 
things of youth had been shorn out of her life, she 
had been crushed by the responsibility of being a 
woman and a devotee. 

No man would believe that such a woman exists. 
The pathetic vanity of man would never be convinced 
that any woman could prefer her own Independence 
to his kisses. 

By the time the suffragette had reached the front 
door of Park View, the interview with the gardener 
was but a pulse beating at the back of her mind. 

206 



I POSE 

Miss Brown, looking as nearly dishevelled as a 
persistently Real Lady could possibly look, was 
standing in the hall, ankle-deep in her own prostrate 
property. Trunks yawned on every side, highly re- 
spectable dresses, like limp ghosts of Miss Brown 
herself, embellished every chair. 

*' And I haven't even begun on Albert's books 
yet." 

" The more of Albert's books we leave behind 
the better," replied the suffragette. " I have got 
him Treasure Island to read on the boat, and he 
might take that one on Chemistry for Sundays." 

" I'm sure I don't know how you manage Albert," 
said Miss Brown. " I could never even get him to 
read the Bible. It really looks as if Providence had 
sent you to us at this crisis." 

" Providence would never have chosen a militant 
suffragette." 

" Well, but really one wouldn't notice your opin- 
ions," said Miss Brown in an encouraging voice. 

"What about Scottie?" asked the suffragette. 
" Has anybody thought what is going to happen to 
him?" 

" I haven't thought of any details," answered Miss 
Brown. *' The doctor's orders were so sudden, they 
altogether upset me. I suppose Scottie can be 
left with John." 

*' I hope he won't," said the suffragette. " I 
caught John using Scottie as a target yesterday. He 

scored two bull's-eyes before I got there." 

207 



I POSE 

" I can't think what to do with him. There is no- 
body but Mr. Wise, and he already has a fierce bull- 
dog. Have you any ideas? " 

" Yes, one. I have a sort of friend on the Island. 
If I left Scottie with him, he would act as a brake in 
the pursuit, because of the difficulties of quarantine." 

" I don't quite follow your meaning," said Miss 
Brown, not unnaturally. " I didn't know you had a 
gentleman friend on the Island." 

*' I haven't. But I'm sure he will be kind to 
Scottie." 

Very late that night, when Courtesy, Mrs. Rust, 
the gardener, and an unknown young man picked 
up at the club by the gardener, were playing Bridge 
in the verandah, a very young boy with a very fat 
dog appeared, asking for Mr. Gardener. The boy 
was too well educated to be afraid of duppies. The 
solid Scottie, too, was felt to be a sound defence 
against the supernatural. 

*' What is this?" asked the gardener, who had 
assumed the melancholy pose of the Rejected One, 
and had unconsciously acquired a sad sweet smile to 
correspond. Even on his death-bed the gardener 
will pose as a dying man. 

The young boy put a note into his hand, and 
dragged Scottie from the shadow where he had 
modestly seated himself. 

" By Jove," said the unknown young man, who 
happened to be Mr. Wise. " It's Scottie, the Park 
View dog." 

208 



I POSE 

The gardener literally burst the envelope open. 
The enclosure said: " Dear Gardener — Will you 
please keep Scottle until I ask you for him again. — 
Your fairly sincere suffragette." 

The note went round the Bridge Table. 

" I have always wondered," said Mrs. Rust, " 
" whether politics were really good for women. 
Now I am sure that they have an unhinging tend- 
ency. What does it mean?" 

" It means that they are going on an expedition," 
said Courtesy. " They want the dog looked after 
for a day or two." 

" Why, but Park View is a regular palace in Grey- 
ville," said Mr. Wise. " There are three servants 
in it, all competent to look after Scottie for a day or 
two." 

" I shall have to do what she says," said the gar- 
dener. " The suffragette's only fault Is that she 
leaves almost too much to the imagination." 

The boy had vanished. 

" Better go round and ask for an explanation," 
said Courtesy. 

" He must play out these doubled lilies," said 
Mrs. Rust. 

" It must be nearly twelve," said Mr. Wise. 
" The cocks have been crowing for an hour." 

The Island cock proclaims the night rather than 

the day. Not even a cock can feel much enthusiasm 

for such a tyrant as the Trinity Island sun. 

" I can't go now," said the gardener. 

209 



I POSE 

But next morning at breakfast he said, " I daren't 
go now." He had hardly slept at all, and looked 
white. The light of the Seeker had gone out of his 
eyes, there had been no wish in him for a wild walk in 
the early sun. He was not even posing. He had 
been pathetically late for breakfast, and Mrs. Rust 
and the lady novelist had disappeared to read the 
English Review and the Lady's Pictorial respectively 
on the front verandah. 

" Why daren't you? " asked the Courtesy. 

"Oh, Courtesy — she's beaten me. She's left 
me without hope." 

Courtesy took several mouthfuls of porridge be- 
fore she replied, " You're young yet, gardener. 
And she isn't so extra unique, after all. If you like, 
I'll go round and ask for an explanation of the dog." 

" You don't know the way," said the gardener 
tragically. 

It was lucky that Mr. Wise at that moment ar- 
rived in his buggy to invite Courtesy and Mrs. Rust 
(if she wasn't too tired) for a drive. The buggy 
was a single one, and held two only, so there was a 
transparency about his motives which did him credit. 
Courtesy never even passed on the invitation to Mrs. 
Rust, and the owner of the vehicle failed to repeat 
it. 

Armed with her inevitable box of sweets. Cour- 
tesy set forth on her romance. 

" Ripping woods," she said, as the sun winked 
through the delicate lace of the forest. 

2IO 



I POSE 

"Ripping," agreed Mr. Wise. "But full of 
ticks." 

Courtesy suffered that beautiful shock that at- 
tacks a woman when she first realises that the man 
by her side is an uncommon person, and that he holds 
the same view about herself. She offered him a 
chocolate cream. 

They went to Park View by the longest way pos- 
sible, but I think the nearest approach to romance 
that they reached was when Courtesy said, " Oh, 
Lor', I am enjoying myself! " 

And Mr. Wise replied, " So am I. I hope you'll 
come again." 

When they reached Park View they were neither 
of them observant enough to notice the forsaken look 
of the house. 

" I'll just go and tackle that funny little 
suffragette," said Courtesy. " I won't be half a 
mo." 

She looked back and smiled at him as she climbed 
the drive. 

" Dey all gone, missis," said John, who was sitting 
in the hall, reading the letters out of the waste-pa- 
per basket. 

"Gone? Whereto?" 

" Gone to Lunnon Town to see a doctah man, 
please, missis." 

" Union Town, you mean." 

" No, please thank you, missis. Gone lars' night 
to catch a big steamboat." 

211 



I POSE 

" How many of them went? " 

" Missis Brown, and Mars' Albert, an' de visitor- 
missis." 

" Do you know their address? Where are you 
forwarding their letters to? " 

John laughed shrilly at this joke. 

" Carn't say, please, missis. Post-missis wouldn't 
send me de letters, now de fambly gone." 

The Island is the home of elusive information. 

" What's the matter with the woman, anyway? " 
said Courtesy, as she remounted the buggy. " I 
never can understand a woman that doesn't know her 
vocation." 

" What is her vocation? " asked Mr. Wise. 

" Ou, I don't know," giggled Courtesy. 

" I think all women ought to marry," said Mr. 
Wise. " Somehow it keeps them softer." 

" It wouldn't make a hard woman soft," said 
Courtesy. " Only all the soft women do marry." 

" Do you consider " 

" Ou, Lor', this is a killing conversation! " inter- 
rupted the lady. " Let's talk about something else." 

" All right. That's a very pretty dress you've got 



on." 



They found the gardener sitting on tenterhooks 
on the verandah, pulling Scottie's ears. 

"What did she say?" 

" She didn't. She's gone to London." 

" I hope they'll take care of Westminster Abbey," 
said Mrs. Rust. 

212 



I POSE 

The gardener said nothing. 

By this time the suffragette was putting romance 
behind her by means of a Httle boat hmping across 
a heavy sea. Compared to the Caribbeania, this 
boat was like my suffragette compared with Mr. 
Shakespeare's Desdemona. There was rust on the 
little boat's metal, and her paint still bore memories 
of London smuts. The purser was occasionally to 
be seen in his shirt sleeves, and the Captain had a 
button off his coat. 

The priest was on board, returning to his flock, 
overflowing with material for sermons. By mutual 
consent he and the suffragette ignored each other. 
He made an attempt to approach Albert, with his 
special children's manner, but that cultured youth 
quickly silenced him. So he occupied himself in try- 
ing to save the soul of the second officer, a docile 
youth, of humble and virtuous tendency. 

Within two days the little boat reached the Isth- 
mus which has lately been converted into one of the 
wonders of the world. 

" My poor Albert," said the suffragette. " I'm 
afraid the doctor says you mustn't go to see the 
Canal. It's so dusty. And you know such a lot 
about it, don't you? It is disappointing." 

" I dow quite edough about it," replied Albert. 
" I have do wish whatever to see it. I dow every 
detail of its codstructiod." 

" That's all right, then. The doctor says when 

it's cool after dark, you may walk as far as the 

215 



I POSE 

gardens behind the quay, and listen to the band." 

" I do dot wish to hear the badd. I wish you ad 
Ah-Bargaret to go away for the whole day, ad let 
the youggest stewardess cob ad sit with be. She is 
a charbig persod, ad it would be very good for you 
to see the Cadal." 

In Albert's eyes the halo of the suffragette was to 
some extent evaporating. Her attitude towards sci- 
ence alienated him in his capacity as an educated man, 
although as a child In pain he still clung to her. And 
she had that morning offended him by buying him a 
bottle of sweets from the barber's shop. 

" I really thigk you sobetlbes forget I ab do 
logger a baby," he observed, and forthwith began 
to lay great stress on the charm of the youngest 
stewardess. 

Miss Brown was delighted at the fall of her 
nephew's latest Idol. 

*' You'd better come away," she said. " Let's 
go and see the Canal. If you stay with Albert when 
he is displeased, you get on his nerves." 

So they landed on the quay of one of the two 
terrible towns that guard the entrances of the Canal. 
They paid a great price and manned a train that cost 
humanity a very great price Indeed to create. That 
train Is built of dead men, the embankment on which 
it runs has largely peopled purgatory, the very sleep- 
ers might as well be coffins, yet the train moves with 
the same callous rhythm as the train from Surblton 

to Waterloo. In it you may see the calm inheritors 

214 



I POSE 

of the fatal past sit upon spread handkerchiefs upon 
the smutty seats, and stick their tickets in their hats 
that the passing of the conductor may not disturb 
their train of thought; and all as if there were no 
ghosts to keep them company. Only outside the 
windows you can see the haunted land, white water 
enveloping a dead forest, ashen trees suffering slow 
drowning, tall grey birds standing amid floating deso- ' 
lation, and the Canal, a strip of successful tragedy, 
creeping between its treacherous red banks. The 
train leaves the Canal for a while, and returns to find 
it in a different mood. The First Lock is the crown 
of that great endeavour. I am assured that much 
more genius has been spent on the Cuts than on the 
Locks, but to you and me, ignorantly seeking copy, 
the First Lock triumphantly dominating the weary 
water-way, seems like the seal of success, as if Man 
had built this stupendous thing as a barrier between 
him and failure. 

When you see the Lock you feel like an ant seen 
through the wrong end of a telescope. The suffra- 
gette, as she stood on the iron way that goes along 
the top edge of one of the gates, had to think of all 
the biggest things she had ever imagined to keep 
herself from dwindling out of existence. Even 
Women's Rights grew small in the light of this man- 
made immensity. She was standing on the highest 
gate, and she could look across a perspective of three 
empty cube-worlds, at the white Canal and the white 

sea beyond it. 

215 



I POSE 

" Really," she said, " there is very little to choose 
between God and Man." 

" Good gracious me, what a thing to say! " said 
Miss Brown, bridling. " God could knock all this 
down with one stroke. 

*' He couldn't knock down the spirit that would 
make man build it up again. Why do we pray to a 
Creator, if we can ourselves create? " 

" I think you had better come out of the sun," said 
Miss Brown coldly. " I am feeling a little sick my- 
self." 

But on their way across the gate back to the white 
paving that borders the Lock, they found their way 
blocked by the priest, who was advancing in the op- 
posite direction. 

It is impossible for a stout Miss Brown and a stout 
priest to pass each other on this route. Two suffra- 
gettes might have passed, but fortunately for the 
Isthmus there was only one present. 

" I will retire," said the priest. " Place aux 
dames, yerce, yerce." 

"Oh, how good of you!" said Miss Brown, 
bridling. " I am sorry to put you to such incon- 
venience." 

With a jocular reference or two to goods trains at 

a shunting station the priest retired from the 

dilemma. But when they had all reached the safety 

of the broad paving again he seemed to have shed 

his desire to cross the gate. He was by himself, 

which he detested; there were countless morals to be 

216 



I POSE 

humorously drawn from the Canal, and nobody to 
point them out to. 

"This is a marvel of workmanship, is it not?" 
he said to Miss Brown, pointedly excluding the suf- 
fragette. 

Miss Brown agreed, and asked whether he had 
felt pretty well on the voyage so far. Thus the 
Canal introduced them, and when the acquaintance 
was safely formed. Miss Brown strove to introduce 
the suffragette. 

" Yerce, yerce," said the priest hurriedly. " We 
have met before. An introduction is unnecessary." 

Fortunately for the suffragette she saw a dog at 
a little distance, and hurried to speak to it. The dog 
is blessedly cosmopolitan. Wherever you may meet 
him he speaks your home tongue to you, and his eyes 
are the eyes of a friend in a strange land. 

The suffragette and the dog walked along the side 
of the Lock some twenty yards behind their elders 
and betters, and the suffragette watched her character 
falling in shreds between them. Some people like 
safe hunting, and there is no prey so defenceless as 
prey that is not there. The priest's conscience had 
been for some time accumulating reasons why the 
modest Miss Brown should be warned of the true 
character of her immodest companion. 

The suffragette allowed them half an hour to finish 

the destruction, and joined them at the train, when 

the dog reluctantly remembered another engagement. 

The party returned to the town in dead silence. 

217 



I POSE 

At the station the priest left them, with promises to 
come and read to Albert. The suffragette and Miss 
Brown made their way across the gardens to the quay. 
Under a great palm, Miss Brown stopped tragically, 
and spoke to her companion for the first time since 
leaving the Lock. 

" I trusted you," she said, rather dramatically, 
though, of course, she was too ladylike for melo- 
drama. " I gave you my hospitality, I succoured you 
when you needed help (this was an echo of the 
priest), and all the while you deceived me, you took 
advantage of my kindness." 

" Certainly you were all that to me," said the suf- 
fragette mildly, " and certainly I am very grateful 
for all your kindness. But I don't remember deceiv- 
ing you." 

" You are an immoral woman," said Miss Brown, 
with a great effort, " and you never told me." 

" It is hardly expected that I should have told you 
that. Partly because it would have been silly, and 
partly because it would have been quite untrue." 

" No one could dislike gossip more than I do," 
said Miss Brown, who loved it. " But a priest is a 
priest, and this one is such a truly nice man, so good- 
hearted, never said a word yesterday when the stew- 
ard upset the soup into his lap. Why did you never 
tell me that you travelled from England in company 
with a man who was not your husband? " 

Now the suffragette, though she was distrustful of 
the reasoning of men, seldom failed to see the point 

218 



I POSE 

of view of a woman, ev^en though that woman was an 
anti. She specialised in feminism, and in her eyes to 
be a woman was in itself a good argument. 

" Of course I ought to have told you, Miss 
Brown," she said in a warmer voice than was usual 
with her. " As a matter of fact it never occurred to 
me that the thing was worth telling, but that, I admit, 
is no excuse. I do see that I have been accepting 
your kindness under false pretences. It is perhaps 
useless to say I am sorry, and worse than useless to 
tell you that I would rather die than be married, and 
that I would rather be hanged than live unmarried 
with a man. Still I admit I allowed all the fools on 
the Caribbeania to think I was also such a fool as to 
be married. I will not bother you again, Miss 
Brown, I will keep out of your way as much as pos- 
sible on the boat. It's only a fortnight." 

Miss Brown was mollified, and when she spoke 
again it was like the angel Gabriel sympathising with 
the difficulties of a beetle. " Of course if you are 
penitent," she said, " I should like to help you to re- 
trace as far as possible the false step you have taken. 
I believe there are Homes. . . . But perhaps you 
had better not come near Albert." 

The little boat was indulging in a two days' rest 
at the Isthmus. It is a problem worthy of the super- 
woman to avoid a fellow-passenger on a small boat in 
port. The bearable space on board becomes limited 
to inches. The side nearest the quay affords nothing 

but coal-dust to breathe, the other side allows a small 

219 



I POSE 

percentage of air to dilute the coal-dust. There is no 
scope for choice. 

After-dinner, however, Miss Brown settled down 
to play chess with Albert. Chess with Miss Brown 
is a most satisfactory game, a crescendo of " Checks " 
leading to a triumphant " Mate " in a delightfully 
short time. 

So the suffragette went on shore to listen to the 
band. 

The Isthmus band is as gaudy in attire as it is 
sombre in complexion, and it plays to a stratum of 
society as striking to the eye as any in the world. 
The Isthmus is the centre of nigger fashion. Here, 
under the glare and the flare of a hot night in the 
season, you may see the effect of a layer of civilisation 
on an aboriginal worship of colour. Crimson, gold, 
and silver are the prevailing motifs. As to the coif- 
fure of the ladies, for every plait to be found on a 
Trinity Island head there are half a dozen on the 
Isthmus. There is something uniquely wicked in the 
appearance of rouge and powder on a mahogany 
ground. The look of vice which the Parisian or 
London lady strives to attain by means of a shopful 
of cosmetics can be acquired by the lady-nigger with 
one dab of the flour-dredger. Once more I pause to 
ask when we may expect the decree that we must fur- 
ther conceal our incurable virtue by means of a com- 
plexion dyed copper colour. 

There was a moon, and there were stars standing 

aloof in the sky; and there were many lights about 

220 



I POSE 

the garden. There were shrill brass voices every- 
where, and the band was playing that tune of resigned 
sentimentality, " My Old Kentucky Home." 

The suffragette felt slightly drunk. She had had 
a day of emotions, and it was an unusual and intoxi- 
cating experience for her to find her emotions escap- 
ing from the iron bound cask in which she kept them. 
She felt totally irresponsible, and when the priest 
came along, looking as conceited as the moon, and as 
sentimentally benign as the stars, she discovered a 
lunatic longing to tear the hat from his head and 
stamp upon it, to make him look a fool, to prick his 
pride; not because of any personal enmity — or so 
she thought — but because he seemed eternally on 
the side of sanity and of yesterday, and barred the 
path of young and mad modernity. She approached 
him. 

The priest suddenly perceived in front of him a 
soul dangerously in need of salvation. 

*' My dear young lady, I have been seeking an op- 
portunity for a quiet chat with you, yerce, yerce. 
Whatever you may think of me, I assure you that I 
am not the hard and inhuman man you think me. I 
should be only too thankful to be of service to you. 
Let us sit on that quiet seat, away from the crowd." 

" It is good of you to risk contamination," said the 
suffragette. 

" My calling leads me among the publicans and 
sinners," said the priest. " It is not my business to 
divide the sheep from the goats." 

221 



I POSE 

" Not your business, but your pleasure," suggested 
the suffragette. 

The priest stiffened. 

" I wish you had not hardened your heart against 
my help," he said. " Believe me, I have every sym- 
pathy with a young and unprotected woman in your 
position. I think sometimes life seems hard on the 
weaker sex, yerce, yerce." 

" It is a great honour to be a woman," said the 
suffragette. " Your God certainly turns his back on 
the individual, but he is very just to the mass. The 
day of women is just dawning." 

" There may be something in what you say," ob- 
served the priest, feeling that she was somehow eras- 
ing all that he had meant to say. " I am sure we 
shall all be glad to see Woman come into her own. 
But . . ." 

" Men may possess the past, but women have the 
future," continued the suffragette, who was certainly 
very much excited. " We have suddenly found what 
you have lost — the courage of our convictions. 
The art of being a fanatic seems to me to be the 
pivot of progress ; but men have lost, and women have 
caught that blessed disease." 

" I do not see how all this applies to the matter m 
hand," said the priest. " Unless you are trying to 
convey to me, by way of an excuse, the craving which 
I am told possesses most women of your persuasion 
— the craving for fame, the morbid wish to be talked 
about." 

222 



I POSE 

" I did not hope to convey anything at all to you. 
And certainly not fame, for there is no such thing. 
I have seen pigeons sitting on the heads of statues of 
great men In London, and I have seen little critics sit- 
ting on their fame. This Is a world of isolated peo- 
ple, and there can be no fame where there is no 
mutual understanding." 

" You are oddly pessimistic, and you are also wil- 
fully evading the point. When I saw you just now, 
I hoped that you had repented of your sin and needed 
my help." 

" I have committed no sin that would appeal to 
you," said the suffragette. " But that is, of course, 
beside the point. What you want Is that I should re- 
pent of being myself, and become a sort of inferior 
female you." 

" Indeed you have come to hasty and mistaken con- 
clusions about my Intentions," said the priest, whose 
principal virtue was perseverance. " Regarding 
your political opinions, I have every sympathy with 
your cause, though none for your methods. There 
Is something so very coarse about militancy." 

" Have you ever tried denying a creature the food 
it needs? I think you would find that even a white 
mouse would be coarse If you starved It." 

" You may be right. My sister is a member of 
the Church League for Women's Suffrage. Per- 
haps you also belong to that sisterhood? " 

" No," she answered. " I belong to the Shrieking 

Sisterhood." 

223 



I POSE 

" It seems useless for me to try and help you in 
this mood," sighed the priest. " I can only pray that 
I may be shown the way to your heart . . ." 

" I have none," she said. 

In a garden not five hundred miles away from the 
garden in which she sat was the Fact which she had 
Forgotten, set in a silver light among the silver trees. 
The gardener stood among the pale grape-fruit trees, 
with his head back in his usual conceited way, with 
his hands in his pockets and his feet in the wet 
grass. 

" This is nonsense," he thought. 

" She is only half human." 

" Love for a thing only half human is only half 
love." 

" You can't build a world out of words, as she tries 
to do." 

" In a thing like love, there is fact and there is 
theory. Theory is only falsehood disguised as fact." 

" She is not a bit pretty," 

" I believe she would rather make an enemy than 
make a friend." 

" Something has gone wrong with the woman of 
to-day. She has left the man behind, but she has not 
gone forward." 

" What have I been about to allow such a woman 
to disturb me? I came to this island a king, and I 
have made myself a slave," 

" It is youth that has burnt me. I am done with 

youth. It is fine to have reached age in theory, and 

224. 



I POSE 

yet In practice still to have one's life ahead. My 
youth has been a fire in my path, and she has stamped 
it out." 

The moon explored the spangled sky. The fire- 
less interwove with the pale purring noises of the 
night. The mad still shadows of the palms blotted 
the grass. 

The gardener went into the verandah firmly posed 
as He Who has Passed through Fire, and has 
emerged, cured of the silly disease of youth, into a 
pale silver light. 

For the gardener made his theories, while the 
suffragette's theories made her. 

The gardener was awakened next morning by 
the loud noise of Scottie chasing lizards across the 
room. Scottie was a bristly Northerner, and never 
became really used to the conditions of tropical life. 
To this day he labours under the delusion that lizards 
are only bald or naked mice, that have deceitfully 
changed their smell and their taste. 

The gardener thought that he awoke perfectly 
light-hearted. He did not recognise the curious 
thing that throbbed in the back of his consciousness 
as his heart. 

He whistled in his bath. He whistled as he came 
out on to the verandah for breakfast. 

Courtesy had risen for early breakfast by mis- 
take. 

" Stopped brooding? " she asked. " Brave boy." 

" Two and two is such a poor formation after all," 

225 



I POSE 

said the gardener. " One and one is much more 
comfortable." 

Courtesy giggled. *' There are times," she said, 
" when two and two is ripping. Mr. Wise Is com- 
ing up to lunch." 

" He came up to lunch yesterday. And he's com- 
ing up to tea to-morrow." 

" Yesterday and to-morrow are not to-day," said 
Courtesy, that practical girl. 

The gardener had not time to ponder, for Mrs. 
Rust then appeared. Her complexion was even 
more of a contrast to her hair than usual. 

" I had a letter last night," she said. " I didn't 
tell you at once, because It's such a vulgar habit to 
blurt out news. I don't know whether I have men- 
tioned my son Samuel to you ? " 

" You have," said Courtesy. 

" So have I," added the gardener. 

" His house has played him false — I knew It 
would. One of the ceilings gave way — on to 
Samuel. Him and his house — he always was a 
fool. I believe he thought the Almighty built his 
house for him." 

" Yes, but what happened to Samuel? " 

" I told you — the celling fell on him." 

" Yes, but what is the result? " 

" Oh, the rest of the house Is still standing. It was 
only one of the ceilings. He put the billiard table 
upstairs, and probably had his rafters made of bam- 
boo." 

226 



I POSE 

" Yes, but I mean what was the result as far as 
Samuel was concerned? " 

" He was concussion. There have been one or 
two people staying in the house since he started the 
atrocious practice of advertising, and they had him 
talven to a hospital. My letter is from the matron." 

" Poor Mrs. Rust," said Courtesy, " you must be 
terribly worried. I suppose you'll be wantin' to get 
home by the next boat." 

" Stuff and nonsense," snapped the mother. 
" Haven't you noticed by now that I have iron 
nerves. Next boat — indeed." 

" But I should have thought " began Cour- 
tesy, and the gardener kicked her under the table. 

" There is only one perfectly obvious thing to do," 
said the gardener, " and that is wait till the next mail, 
a fortnight hence. Knowing Mrs. Rust as I do, 
Courtesy, I am sure she will follow this obvious 
course." 

" Obvious course — indeed," said Mrs, Rust, 
much relieved. " Stuff and nonsense. I shall do 
exactly as I please, whether it's obvious or not. Sup- 
pose I decide to go home by Wednesday's boat, 
what then, young man? " 

The gardener shook his head. " You won't, I 
know," he said. *' You are too reasonable." 

" Reason be blowed," said Mrs. Rust with spirit. 

" You don't know me very well, young man, if you 

think I'm like all the other old cats, to be persuaded 

by that sort of argument." 

227 



I POSE 

The gardener was now an expert at saving Mrs. 
Rust from herself. Although she entangled her- 
self habitually in contradictions, her real mind was 
not subtle enough to be well hidden, and to guide her 
action into the path of her desire was a matter that 
only required a little delicacy. The gardener, being 
a gardener, was always ready with tactful guidance 
and unseen support in such matters. In this case, he 
would have been surprised if you had told him that 
his secret desire pointed the same way as Mrs. Rust's. 
He thought he had killed desire. But he was tired 
of the Island, and he had by that mail received a 
quarterly instalment of his income. 

*' Courtesy," said Mrs. Rust, " we sail for home 
next Wednesday. Unreasonable — indeed. And 
none the worse for that." 

" We have engaged the car for a week from Fri- 
day," said Courtesy. " Mr. Wise is lunching with 
us on Thursday. And the hotel insists on a week's 
notice." 

" I am paying you two hundred a year," said Mrs. 
Rust brutally, " to save me from these vulgar de- 
tails." 

" Oh, Lor'," said Courtesy. 

" But what about Scottie? " asked the gardener. 

" Scottie's your affair, not mine. I'm not paying 
you £200 a year to follow me about." 

The gardener is a very difficult person to snub. 

" Scottie and I are coming gratis." 

And Mrs. Rust said, "Good." 

228 



I POSE 

But the little boat, with the suffragette on board of 
her, fled across the Atlantic, as if aware of the pro- 
jected pursuit of the great mail steamer. 

The suffragette, a morose unit on a desert island 
of her own making, stood separated from the world 
by a gulf of gossip. She used to sit on the poop, 
where nobody else would sit, with the wind in 
her hair and the sun in her eyes, building the- 
ories. 

There are some people who can never see a little 
cloud of fantasy float across the horizon of their 
dreams without building a heavy castle in the air 
upon it, and bringing it to earth. Whenever the 
suffragette thought of the gardener, she broke the 
thought with a theory. It is sad to be burdened with 
a brain that must always track illusion to disillusion- 
ment. She had one consolation, one persistent and 
glorious contradiction, one shining truth in a welter of 
self-questioning: — " Fm alone — I'm alone — I'm 
alone. . . ." 

It was not until they had passed the Azores that 

a voice from the outer world spoke to her. They 

had reached those islands late one moonlit night. 

The little square houses, climbing up the hill-side in 

orderly ranks, looked like silver bricks in a castle of 

dreams. There was a white fringe of breaking 

waves threaded between the black sea and the black 

land. From the boats that hurried between the 

shore and the steamer, little lamps swung and thin 

voices cut the darkness. Thundering silence seemed 

229 



I POSE 

to invade the emptiness left by the ceasing of the pro- 
peller. The ceaseless loom that always sang behind 
the turmoil of the suffragette's consciousness spun the 
moon into a quiet melody. The still lap of the sea 
against the ship's stern struck the ear like a word 
never spoken before. You could hear the gods cre- 
ating new things. You could hear the tread of the 
stars across the sky. 

"I am sorry to disturb you," said Miss Brown; 
" it's Albert. I knew something would come of his 
going to the fancy-dress dance as Galileo, with such a 
thin tunic on; but he is so wilful. And now he has a 
high temperature, and a worse pain in his side than 
ever. He is crying for you." 

It was a strange sensation for the suffragette, after 
all these days of loneliness, to be cried for. Tears, 
like all things that belong to women, appealed to her 
beyond words. 

She found Albert beating on the wall of his cabin. 
When he cried — it hurt. When he breathed — it 
hurt. When he moved — it hurt. And yet he had 
to cry and pant and struggle. There was something 
in the suffragette's plain and ordinary face that acted 
as an antidote to Albert's hectic personality. She 
was a poor nurse; her only experience of the sick- 
room had been from her own sickbed. But she had 
a cold hand, an imagination which she only allowed 
to escape at a crisis, and nerves very difficult to ex- 
cite. All that night, while the ship climbed the steep 
seas of the Bay, she and the doctor kept something 

230 



I POSE 

that was very big from invading the little cabin. 
The battle was, of course, a losing one. There is 
something almost funny in the futility of fighting 
Heaven on an issue like this. 

I said there should be no death-bed scenes In this 
book, so I will only add that after much battling 
Albert managed at last to get to sleep, and he died 
before he woke. 

The suffragette was there, but she was not needed. 
She went away and cried because no one would ever 
cry for her again. 

She marconied for Miss Brown's brother to meet 
the bereaved aunt at Southampton. And when the 
boat reached home, she carried her mustard-coloured 
portmanteau up the gangway, and, by disappearing, 
closed the Incident. 

In this wonderful age we do our disappearing by 
machinery. Fairy godmothers prefer Rolls-Royce 
cars to broomsticks, the pirate employs a submarine 
instead of a gallant three-decker, the black sheep of 
the piece, Instead of donning a mask and confining 
the rest of his career to Maidenhead Thicket, books 
his passage to a Transatlantic sheepfold on a thirty- 
knot liner. 

The suffragette disappeared by the London train. 
By travelling third, she hoped to escape the majority 
of her fellow-passengers, and it was not until the 
train began to leave the station that she identified a 
hitherto unnoticed person opposite to her as the 
priest. 

231 



I POSE 

The priest was always overcome by a feeling of 
virtue when he travelled third. 

" So our modesty is mutual," he said jovially to 
the suffragette. " Yerce, yerce, in England I travel 
third on principle. My parish, you know, is in a 
poor part of London, and I think a shepherd should 
as far as possible share the circumstances of his 
flock." 

The suffragette hovered for a moment over a very 
crude flower of repartee dealing with cattle-trucks, 
but discarded the idea. She was always cautious, 
when she allowed herself time for caution. Her 
principle in conversation was, " When in doubt — 
don't." But being a militant suffragette, she was 
seldom in doubt. 

The priest was aggrieved with the suffragette, 
partly because he felt obliged to speak to her. He 
would have preferred to ignore her, but she had be- 
haved too well during the last few days. She had 
tried as hard to save a life as ever he had tried to 
save a soul, and had failed with equal dignity. In- 
consistency annoyed him very much. You must be 
one of two things, a sheep or a goat, preferably the 
latter until the priest himself had had time to lead 
you to the fold. For a confessed goat suddenly to 
don wool without any help from him looked very 
much like deliberate prevarication. He did not now 
know how to classify the suffragette, and not know- 
ing how to do a thing in which he had specialised was 

naturally exasperating. 

232 



I POSE 

" You were asking for my advice about the prob- 
lem of your future," he said, leaning confidentially 
towards her. " I have been thinking much about 
you, and I believe I have solved the problem." 

I need hardly say that the suffragette never asked 
for advice. When circumstances obliged her to fol- 
low the advisable course, she hid her docility like a 
sin. 

" My future always looks after itself, thank you," 
she said in a polite voice, " and so does my past. 
It's old enough." 

The priest stiffened for a moment, but when on 
the track of a goat he was hard to check. Besides, 
the suffragette's voice was so low and calm that her 
words seemed like a mistake, not to be taken 
seriously. 

" My idea is that you should join in the glorious 
campaign against poverty and sin in the slums," 
he continued. " I assure you that peace lies that 
way. My sister once had a love affair with a free- 
thinker; she lost a great deal of weight at the time, 
and became almost hysterical. But she followed my 
advice, and now runs several social clubs in connec- 
tion with my Church in the Brown Borough, North 
London, where the poor may buy cocoa and cake 
and listen to discourses by earnest Christian 
workers." 

" And what does she weigh now? " asked the suf- 
fragette, after a pause. 

" She is a splendid example of a Christian 

233 



I POSE 

woman," said the priest, " a woman of unwavering 
faith, indefatigable in charitable works." 

" I think I shall come down to your parish as an 
antidote," said the suffragette, " the only sort of 
Anti I ever could tolerate." 

Certainly my suffragette is not worthy to be the 
heroine of a book. I must apologise for presenting 
a nature so undiluted by any of the qualities that go 
to make good fiction. A pun, I admit, is the last 
straw, but it is unfortunately a straw occasionally 
clutched at by erring humanity, though rarely admit- 
ted by the novelist. 

" I should not advise you to choose the Brown 
Borough for the scene of your endeavour," said the 
priest hurriedly. " There is little scope for workers 
unconnected with a church there. I had in my mind 
for you the neighbourhood of Southwark, or Wal- 
worth, South London. Much more suitable, yerce, 
yerce. The Brown Borough is very unhealthy for 
those unaccustomed to London slums." 

" Yet your sister gained weight and lost hysteria 
there," said the suffragette maliciously. " I myself 
might be said to have room for improvement on 
both these points." 

" I strongly advise you to choose another parish," 
said the priest, bitterly repenting of his zeal. " So 
much excellent work has been done in the Brown 
Borough that the majority of the people ought by 
now to be on the way to find salvation, both in body 
and soul." 

234. 



I POSE 

" That's why I propose to come as an antidote," 
said the suffragette. 

The conv^ersation closed itself. They opened 
the Spectator and Votes for Women simultane- 
ously. 

London provided the sort of weather it reserves 
for those who return from sun-blessed lands. It was 
a day with rain in the past and rain in the future, but 
never rain in the present. The sort of day that 
makes you feel glad you thought of bringing your 
umbrella, and then sorry to find you left it in the last 
bus. The streets looked like wet slates splashed 
with tears. 

The suffragette kept a lonely flat not far from 
Covent Garden, apparently with the object of ensur- 
ing herself the right to exercise a vote when she 
should have procured that luxury. For she very 
seldom put the flat to the ordinary uses of flats. It 
Contained a table and two chairs, as a provision 
against the unlikely event of its owner's succumbing 
to social weaknesses. It also contained a bed. Cur- 
tains and carpets, and any cooking arrangement more 
elaborate than a gas-ring, are not included in the 
Theory of the Hair Shirt, the motto of which is, " I 
can very well do without." 

The suffragette deposited the mustard-coloured 
portmanteau at this Spartan abode, and went to re- 
port herself to her Society. She was not a famous 
suffragette. If I told you her name, you would not 
raise your eyebrows and laugh facetiously and say, 

235 



I POSE 

" Oh — that maniac . . ." She was nominally one 
of the rank and file, although, being rebellious even 
against co-rebels, she seldom acted under orders. 

There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of workers 
In the world, the people who do all the work, and the 
people who think they do all the work. The latter 
class is generally the busiest, the former never has 
time to be busy. 

The Chief Militant Suffragette, who believed that 
she held feminism in the hollow of her hand, was a 
born leader of women. She was familiar with the 
knack of wringing sacrifices from other people. She 
was a little lady in a minor key, pale and plaintive, 
with short hair, like spun sand. She dressed as 
nearly as possible like a man, and affected an eye- 
glass. She probably thought that in doing this she 
sacrificed enough for the cause of women. She had 
safely found a husband before she cut her hair. I 
suppose she had sent more women to prison than any 
one magistrate in London, but she had never been to 
prison herself. 

The cause of the Suffrage, while attracting the 
finest women in the country, also attracts those 
who consider themselves to be the finest. It has an 
equal fascination for those who can work but can 
never lead and for those who can lead but never 
work. 

" I have written to you three times," said the Chief 

M.S. pathetically to the suffragette. " I do think 

you might have answered." 

236 



I POSE 

" So do I," admitted the suffragette, " only 
that I have been abroad. What did you write to me 
about?" 

" Abroad? " said the Chief M.S., and raised her 
eyebrows. She had none really, but she raised the 
place where they should have been. " Abroad? 
Enjoying yourself at such a time as this? " 

"What do you mean?" asked the suffragette. 
" What has happened? Have we got the Vote? " 

The eyeglass of the Chief M.S. fell out with an- 
noyance. " Of course not," she said, " but it's the 
great massed procession and deputation to-morrow, 
and I wanted you to help with the North London sec- 
tion." 

The suffragette loathed processions. She loathed 
working or walking with a herd. She would rather 
have blown up Westminster Abbey than stewarded 
at a meeting. A less honest woman would have flat- 
tered herself that these are the signs of a great and 
lonely mind, but the suffragette knew them as the 
signs of vanity. And to cure vanity is, of course, the 
business of a hair shirt. 

" When have I got to be there? And where? " 
she asked. 

In the eyes of the Chief M.S. punctuality in other 
people was the ideal virtue. The moment she named 
to her assistants was always an hour before the cor- 
rect time, and two hours before the one she chose for 
her own appearance. 

The suffragette had long been a servant of the 

237 



I POSE 

Society. By an instinctive calculation she managed 
to arrive at Little South Lane next day punctually at 
the moment when help began to be needed. She col- 
lected some of the native enthusiasts who were ad- 
ding fuel to their ardour on the door-steps of neigh- 
bouring public-houses. She quelled the political an- 
tagonism of a bevy of little boys who were vocally 
competing with a Great Woman's preliminary ad- 
dress. She soothed the objections of the paid ban- 
ner-bearers, who had not been led to expect the addi- 
tional opposition of a high wind. She eliminated 
from the procession as far as possible all suffragists 
below the age of four. She lent a moment's friendly 
attention to the reasons why Woman's Sphere is the 
Home, expounded by a hoarse spinster from an up- 
per window. She courageously approached an 
enormous dock-hand, who had snatched a banner 
from its rightful bearer, and was waving it with many 
oaths. 

" Might I trouble you for that banner? " said the 
suffragette. 

The gentleman's reply was simple but obscene. 

" Might I trouble you at once to move out of my 
way, and let the procession join up? " said the suffra- 
gette In a red voice. 

" Gaw-love yer, me gal, I'm comin' along," said 
the gentleman. " Wot price me for a . . . suffra- 
gette? You'll need a few fists, if you git as fur as 
the Delta way." 

How very rare it is to mistake the staff for the 

238 



I POSE 

broken reed. The suffragette recovered herself 
quickly. 

" I beg your pardon," she said. " I ought to 
have known from your face that you were a sensible 
man. How good of you to carry a banner ! " 

The procession, like a snake, reared its head and 
moved. In the van a marching song was begun, in 
the rear — a ragtime. The police, looking digni- 
fied, but feeling silly, marched in single file on either 
flank, and kept an eye on the interests of the traffic. 
The one mounted policeman obviously regretted the 
prominence of his position, his horse was an anti, and 
showed a man-like tendency to argue with its hoofs. 

The suffragette walked between a little woman in 
a plush coat with a baby and a person who might 
have been a poetess, or a philosopher, or a Low 
Church missionary, but was certainly very earnest. 
The long brown streets swung by. The flares on the 
coster's barrows anchored to the kerb, danced in the 
yellow air. A hum of barbaric voices, and the large 
firm pulse of many feet marching, made a back- 
ground to the few clear curses and the fewer clearer 
blessings from the pavement. 

" I wish to Gawd my kiddie 'ed been a gel," said 
the little mother beside the suffragette. " Bein' a 
woman — mikes yer proud-like. . . ." 

The suffragette put her chin up and laughed. 
" As a man, your kiddie'll make you proud. There's 
sure to be something splendid about a man whose 
mother was proud to be a woman." ' 

239 



I POSE 

" Men . . ." said the little mother, with more 
alliteration than refinement, " are . . . brute 
beasts." 

" 'Ere, draw it mild," said the dock-hand, who was 
just In front. 

" There's men, wytin' for us, somewhere down the 
Delta wy now. Wytin' to mike us yell an' run, 
wytin' to 'urt us — jus' becos we was proud to be 
women." 

" Waiting for us? " gasped the poetess. " Why 
— how dreadful ... I wasn't told there would be 
any fighting." 

" You might have known there would be," said 
the suffragette. " You can't assert facts without 
fighting for them." 

The poetess, obviously wishing she had left such 
dangerous weapons as facts to themselves, gave a 
hoarse giggle, and said, " I declare, I'm quite fright- 
ened . . ." 

" It is frightening," agreed the suffragette. " Not 
the bruises, but the stone-wallness of men. I'm al- 
ways frightened by opposition that I can't see 
through at all. I am frightened of Delta Street 
hooligans. I am also frightened in exactly the same 
way by a polite enemy. You go into the law courts, 
for instance, and watch those men wearing their wigs 
like haloes and their robes like saints' armour " 

" You do talk nice, miss," said the little mother. 

*' I wish you'd come down to the Brown Borough, an' 

jaw my young man." 

240 



I POSE 

The suffragette, though a trifle damped, continued, 
" It isn't that their arguments are strong, nobody- 
minds that, but it's that they don't bother to have 
any arguments. Just like the hooligans, only in dif- 
ferent words. It's no more an argument than it is 
one between God and Satan. One side is established, 
the other doesn't exist. It makes you see that to- 
morrow is never strong enough to fight to-day. It 
would take an angel to admit to-morrow as a fact at 
all, and unfortunately it's men we're up against." 

"Then what's the good of all this?" asked the 
poetess, who was naturally becoming more and more 
depressed. 

" Oh, a losing battle's fine," said the suffragette. 
" I'd rather wear a black eye than a wig, or a crown, 
any day." 

" 'Ear, 'ear," said the dock-hand. 

" Wiv Parliament, for instance," said the little 
mother, who was evidently accustomed to fill her 
sphere with her voice. " They sits an' argoos about 
Welsh Establishment, an' all the while I 'ed my little 
gel die of underfeeding, becos I wuz carryin' this one, 
and couldn't get work." 

" Thet's all very well," said the dock-hand; " but 
wot do you expec' ? You carn't expec' the lawyers to 
frow up their wig an' say the Law's a Liar. (Not 
but wot it ain't.) You carn't expec' the Prime Min- 
ister to tell 'isself * There's Mrs. Smiff's biby dyin', 
I mus' go dahn an' see abaht it.' (Not but wot It 
ain't 'ard.") 

241 



I POSE 

" There are lots of things you can't kill," said the 
suffragette. " But you can always try. Men don't 
try, because impossibility Is one of the things they 
beheve In." 

" You carn't kill Votes fer Women," shouted the 
little mother, with a burst of enthusiasm. She waved 
her baby Instead of a banner. 

At that moment a yelling horror dropped like a 
bomb upon the level street. The suffragette saw the 
mounted policeman, complete with his horse, fall 
sideways, like a toy. She saw a chequered crowd of 
perspiring faces come upon her like a breaking wave. 
She saw the banners ahead stagger like flowers be- 
fore a wind. She saw the poetess fall, and some one 
stamp on her shoulder. She saw a man with a fierce- 
coloured handkerchief knotted round his throat seize 
the little mother's chin and wrench It up and down, as 
he cursed In her face. The suffragette, who never 
could be angry In a dignified way, gave a hoarse 
croak and snatched his arm. Possibly she felt like 
the child Hercules during his interview with the 
serpents, but she did not look like that at all. The 
man jerked his arm up, the suffragette's seven stone 
went up too. She was waved like a flag. The tears 
were shaken out of her eyes. Her feet kicked the 
air. And then she alighted against a wall. She 
saw a chlnless and unshaven face heave Into her upper 
vision, and a great hand, like black lightning, cleft 
the fog. The knuckles of the hand cut like a blunt 
knife. In North London we always repeat our argu- 

242 



I POSE 

ments, when we consider them good ones. The suf- 
fragette, who was a person of no muscular abihty at 
all, gave up hoping for the chance of a retort in kind, 
after the third repetition. So the argument went on 
undisputed, until the dock-hand perceived it, when it 
was successfully overborne. 

The suffragette picked up her hat. She hated it 
because It looked so dirty. She hated her heart be- 
cause it felt so sick. She picked up the poetess and 
hated her because she was crying. She was crying 
herself, but she thought she looked courageously 
wrathful. 

" What do we do now? " sobbed the poetess. 

" We walk on," said the suffragette, and took her, 
not very gently, by the arm. 

" But I can't, I can't. It may happen again," 
wailed the poetess. " Policeman, can't I go home? " 

" Yes, miss," said the policeman, wiping his brow. 

" But there are no taxis." 

" No, miss," said the policeman. 

You never can tell what strange thing you may do 
at a crisis. The poetess slipped a confiding hand 
into that of the policeman, and walked meekly by his 
side. 

" Murderers . . ." exclaimed the little mother. 
" They might 'ev done biby In. Your 'ead's bleedin', 
miss. So's my gum, but I kin swaller that." 

The suffragette felt as if she had been divided in 

two. Her militant spirit, clothed In Its hair shirt, 

seemed to be moving at a height, undaunted, monop- 

243 



I POSE 

olised as usual by the splendour of its cause. And 
below, very near the dust, a terribly tired woman, a 
unit among several hundreds of other terribly tired 
women, put one foot before the other along an end- 
less road. 

You must stride over a gap here, as the proces- 
sion did mentally. For a very long time I don't 
think anybody thought anything except — " How 
long, O Lord, how long? " 

When I am very tired and see the high and 
friendly smile of St. Paul's curved across the sky, I 
feel as if I am near home. I always think St. Paul's 
is like a mother to all London, while Westminster 
Abbey is like a nun, the bride of heaven, with an in- 
finite scorn of you and me. St. Paul's stands at the 
top of the hill of difficulty, and after that your feet 
walk by themselves down Ludgate Hill. 

There was a burst of song from all parts of the 
procession as it passed that friendly doomed mile- 
stone. The burst was simultaneous, but the song 
was too various to be really effective. 

" Votes for Women," shouted the little mother. 
" I sy, mi-ss, when are you comin' dahn to the Brown 
Borough to 'elp wiv votes for women? We ain't got 
nobody there as kin talk like you." 

" Am I coming down? " asked the suffragette, who 

had a vague idea that she had said many things, now 

forgotten. " I never speak at meetings now. My 

brain is always wanting to say the next thing but one, 

and my tongue is always saying the thing before last. 

244 



I POSE 

There's too much to be said about Votes for Wo- 



men." 



" Meetin's . . ." said the little mother in a voice 
of scorn. " Tain't meetin's we want. It's some- 
body jus' to talk ornery, as if they was a friend-like. 
Somebody to live up the street — if you unnerstan' 
me — an' drop in, an' be interested. When my little 
gel died, lars' October, an' 'ole lot of lidies made en- 
quiries, an' got me a few 'alfpence a week to git on 
wiv till I could get back to the box-miking. I useter 
'ave to go to an orfice an' answer questions, an' the 
lidy useter sy she was sorry to seem 'quisitive, but she 
ses — If some on yer cheat, you mus' all on yer suf- 
fer. . . . Bless you, I didn' mind answering ques- 
tions, but I was very low then, an' I useter tike it 'ard 
that none o' them lidies never seemed interested. 
Nobody never as't wot was the nime o' my little gel 
that died, nor 'ow old she was, nor nothink about 'er 
pretty wys that she useter 'ave. . . . 'Tisn't that 
they ain't kind, but it's being treated in a crowd-like 
as comes 'ard, an' there's many feels the sime. . . ." 

" What do you expect? " asked the poetess, who 
was now detached from the policeman. " I am my- 
self a C.O.S. secretary, so I know something about it. 
None of us have time to do more than is really neces- 
sary. And when there's public money in question — 
well, it's all very well, but one can't be too care- 
ful." 

'* When there's money in question you may be 
right, miss," said the little mother. " But it ain't 

245 



I POSE 

alius a question of money, an' it seems to me as 'ow, 
wiv votes fer women, if some on them suffragettes 'ud 
stop talking about women's wiges at meetin's, an' 
come an' look at wiges at 'ome, they'd 'it a lot of 
women wot thinks now as 'ow votes for women is 
only a public thing an' don't matter outside Trafal- 
gar Square. It seems to 'it you 'arder if a person's 
friendly than if they're heloquent. . . ." 

" Something is happening in front," said the 
poetess, looking wildly round for her policeman. 

" The police have turned on us," said the suffra- 
gette. " They always do in the Strand. Downing 
Street gets nervous when we get as near as this." 

It was too true. The police, relieved to be at last 
freed from the burden of their false position, were 
characteristic of their profession. 

" But I was told I was to walk to the Houses 
of Parliament," said the poetess, finding her quon- 
dam protector's hand on her shoulder. 

" You may walk to Jericho, miss," replied the 
policeman with a wit as heavy as his hand. " Only 
not more than three In a group, if you please." 

A great crowd of little groups trickled on to the 
Embankment and followed the tide of the river to- 
wards Westminster. There was a moon. I think 
the moon Is really the heroine of this unheroic book. 
Half the blessing of London belongs to the river, 
and half the blessing of the river belongs to the 
moon. Do you know how beautifully a full moon 
bends out of her sky to trail her fingers in the river? 

246 



I POSE 

Do you know how faerlly she shoots shavings of her 
silver under the bridges, and how she makes tender 
the blackness of the barges and the shadows of the 
little wharves? I always think the moon has in her 
quiver of charms a special shaft for the river of 
London. She never smiles like that elsewhere. 

It was no surprise to Westminster to see the depu- 
tation and procession arrive, albeit in a less neat form 
than that in which it started. The police force has 
moments of wonderful insight into the psychology 
of law-breakers, and in this case it seemed aware that 
a procession of women disbanded and told to go home 
in the Strand is nevertheless likely to appear sooner 
or later in Parliament Square. The great space re- 
sounded to the tramp of the feet of the law. A de- 
tachment of mounted police strove to look uncon- 
cerned In the Whitehall direction. I always think it 
is unjust to drag dumb animals into these political 
questions. I wonder the S.P.C.A. doesn't step in. 
Imagine the feelings of a grey mare, for instance, on 
being called upon to charge Into the ranks of a female 
deputation to Downing Street. 

Neither the suffragette nor I are familiar with the 
great ways of deputations. We are of the humble 
ranks which suffer physical buffetings in the shadow 
of St. Stephen's, while our superiors suffer moral buf- 
fetings In the shadow of the English Constitution. 
There Is very little sport In being a shuttlecock any- 
way, but while the head gets the straight hit, the 

feathers feel most the stress of adverse winds. 

247 



I POSE 

The object of the police in a crowd is to keep it 
moving. The direction in which it is to move is 
never explained to it. Whether you move to the 
right or the left you are sure to be wrong in the eyes 
of the law. If you weigh seven stone, your tendency 
is to move either upwards or downwards. Cor- 
rectly speaking, the suffragette never set foot in 
Parliament Square for some time after she arrived 
there. She was caught in a gust of crowd, and borne 
In an unexpected direction. She did not mind which 
way she went, but she was human enough to mind 
whether her ribs got broken. Even in a good cause, 
matters like these touch you personally. The shoul- 
ders of partisans and martyrs, packed closely against 
your ribs, feel just as hard as the shoulders of the 
less enlightened. The suffragette began to feel a 
cold whiteness creeping up from her boots to her 
heart. She began to take a series of last looks at the 
moon and the spires of the Abbey. She reached the 
earth just when she had decided that she had reached 
the door-step of Heaven, and found herself cast by 
an eddy into a tiny peace. There, in an alcove, was 
the Chief M.S., protected by a stout husband. The 
Chief M.S., whose hair was too short to have been 
dragged down, and whose eyeglass was trembling 
on her breast with pleasurable excitement, was look- 
ing cool and peaceful. 

" You do look a wreck," she said brightly to the 

suffragette. " I have been wanting to talk to you 

about something I want you to do for me." 

248 



I POSE 

This was such a frequent remark on the lips of 
the Chief M.S. that, as a rule, it made no impression 
on her followers and acquaintances. But the suffra- 
gette was incredibly tired, and the power of kicking 
against pricks was taken from her. She had no 
spirit in her except the ghost of her hair shirt theory, 
that fiend which croaks — " Go on, go on. . . ." 
She made a great effort. She pulled her hat down 
on her head, she put her chin up, she wrapped her 
cloak of endurance more closely round her. " Talk 
on," she said. 

"Oh, not now, child," said the Chief M.S. 
" Come and see me next Wednesday. I shall be 
away for a long week-end after this." 

It seemed like making an appointment for a hun- 
dred years hence. The suffragette agreed, because 
it seemed impossible that she could live so long as 
next Wednesday. 

At that moment the mounted police charged. The 
careful husband of the Chief M.S. whisked her away. 
The forelegs of a horse entered the suffragette's al- 
cove. The safest place in a police charge is under 
the noses of the horses. These animals, usually 
anxious to preserve neutrality, have mastered the art 
of playing upon the fleeing backs of agitators as 
gently as the pianist plays upon the keys. I have 
had a horse's hoofs fanning my shoulder-blades for 
minutes on end, and yet only suffered from the elbows 
of my fellow-fugitives. 

The suffragette, alone on the strip of pavement be- 

249 



I POSE 

tween the rearing horses and the recoiling crowd, 
conceived the sensational idea of charging the 
chargers. This is the sort of idea that comes to one 
after a five-hour march and a series of street fights. 
I have never been drunk with liquor, but I know what 
it is to be drunk all the same. The suffragette de- 
termined that those horses should never see her coat- 
tails. She heard a voice shouting, " Women . . . 
women . . . women . . ." and on finding it was her 
own, added, " Don't run back — run forward." 
And she flung herself on the breast of the nearest 
horse. 

A foot-policeman caught her on the rebound. She 
was not in the least hurt, but he picked her up and 
carried her across his shoulder. She hit her fists 
against his helmet; it sounded like a drum. It seems 
hard to believe, but I assure you that even on that 
high though humble perch, she was revelling in the 
thought that it concerned nobody but herself that she 
was going to prison. 

My poor heroine, I am afraid, has stepped be- 
yond the limits of your toleration, but if you look, 
you will find I never asked you to admire her. 

The policeman lowered her, and stood her like a 
doll on the steps of the Metropolitan Railway. 
That excellent institution, shocked at the doings out- 
side, had drawn its grill modestly across its entrance, 
and its employes, like good lions at the Zoo watching 
the rampant behaviour of the public, were gazing 

through the bars. 

250 



I POSE 

" You're not the right size for this job, young 
woman," said the policeman. 

The suffragette's reply was a further struggle. 
The policeman held both her arms. 

" You go 'ome," he said, " The deputation's 
goin' 'ome now, like a good gel. What's your sta- 
tion?" 

A terrible exhaustion drooped like a weight re- 
leased upon the suffragette. The only retort that 
came to her mind was, " Leicester Square, please." 

" Change at the Embankment," said a railway of- 
ficial, and opened eighteen inches of the gate. The 
policeman pushed her in. She took her ticket, and 
went home as meekly as any Anti. 

You may be surprised to hear that the suffragette 
spent the next day in bed. A day in bed is not, of 
course, part of the Hair Shirt Theory, but this was a 
Sunday, and Sunday is a day of weakness, though it 
seems politer to the Old Testament to call it a day 
of relaxation. The suffragette always spent Sunday 
as she liked, with the hair shirt doffed and neatly 
folded on a chair beside her. She smoked as many 
cigarettes as she pleased, instead of the strict two of 
ordinary life, she occasionally ate as many as three 
large meals, she had been known to invest in nougat. 
Sundays were the oases in her desert, and if the gar- 
dener had chanced on one for the scene of one of 
his luckless spasms, this story might have been much 
prettier. It is very tiring to be yourself with such 
ardour as the suffragette employed, and to be some- 



I POSE 

body else for twenty-four hours once a week becomes 
almost a necessity. 

Besides, she had court plaster on her forehead, and 
the publicly court-plastered pose was one that the 
suffragette loathed. 

If the Chief M.S. had had the luck to catch a 
painless black eye in the Cause of the Vote, she would 
have flaunted it like a flag up and down Piccadilly. 
But the husband had been almost too effective. She 
had not even broken her eyeglass. 

One of the most striking differences between the 
suffragette and the gardener was that the gardener 
told himself: " When I die, they will be sorry, and 
they will perhaps understand." But the suffragette 
thought: "When I die, nobody except the char- 
woman will know." 

The suffragette went to see the Chief M.S. on 
Wednesday. 

" How curious you should come this afternoon," 
said the Chief M.S. " Some one was here asking 
for you only this morning." 

The suffragette hardly ever explained herself. 
She did not remind the Chief M.S. that she was there 
by appointment. Nor did she ask who had been in- 
quiring for her. Perhaps she knew. 

" He asked for your address," said the Chief M. 
S. " But as he was a man, I didn't give it to him. 
He didn't leave his name, but he asked me to tell you 
that your dog was now in the hands of the quarantine 

252 



I POSE 

officials. I attacked him on the suffrage question, as 
I always do strange men." 

"What did he say?" 

" He had nothing to say. I pointed out to him 
how ludicrous was the argument that just because a 
person wore two tubes on his legs Intead of one, he 
was competent to rule." 

" I have never heard that argument used," said 
the suffragette soberly. " I didn't know that even 
men " 

" Why, you're as dense as he was," snapped the 
Chief M.S. " Of course they don't put it like that. 
He asked me which M.P. was responsible for the 
tubular argument. I saw it was no use going on. 
He left his address for me to give you." 

"What was it you wanted to see me about?" 
asked the suffragette. 

" Did I want — Oh, yes . . . Well, I have been 
thinking you have done nothing for the Cause lately, 
have you? " 

The suffragette fingered a sore dint under the 
shadow of her hat. " Hardly anything," she admit- 
ted. 

" I think the slum districts want working up," said 
the Chief M.S. " Somebody who walked behind 
you in the procession said you hobnobbed wonderfully 
with the North London women. How would it be 
if you were to undertake a series of informal meet- 
ings " 

»53 



I POSE 

" It isn't meetings they want, they told me so them- 
selves," said the suffragette. 

" It's meetings everybody wants," retorted the 
Chief M.S. " I thought also that you might start a 
soup kitchen or a turkey club, or one of those things 
that one does start in the slums. You can't educate 
the poor without feeding them, I'm sure." 

"Nonsense! " said the suffragette, who was cer- 
tainly no more accommodating as a follower than as 
a woman. " I don't believe the anatomy of the poor 
is one bit different from the anatomy of the rich. 
And I don't believe the way to anybody's soul lies 
through their stomach. Only if one is hungry, one 
naturally pretends that blind alley is a thoroughfare." 

" How do you suggest that the slums should be 
worked up, then, may I ask? " said the Chief M.S. 
coldly. There is no point in being a born leader, if 
the rank and file refuses to behave suitably. 

The suffragette loathed the wording of this re- 
mark, but kindly refrained from further criticism. 
" If you like . . ." she said, " I'll try an experi- 
ment on the Brown Borough. I'll give no meetings 
and I'll give no membership cards, but if you leave 
me time I'll bring as many women to the Cause as 
ever did a dozen meetings in Trafalgar Square." 

To hear of other people busy always cheered the 
Chief M.S. 

" You will have done a good work," she said 
warmly. 

The suffragette went out with those words sing- 

254 



I POSE 

Ing in her head. A thing that very seldom hap- 
pened to other people's words in the ears of this self- 
absorbed young woman. 

" To have done a good work . . ." she said, on 
the top of a west-bound 'bus. 

" To have done a good work . . . But if it were 
a good work it could never be done. The way of 
good work goes on for ever. And that's why I 
swear I'll do this work till I die . . ." 

It was fine to feel busy again. The suffragette 
had always liked to have the measure of her day 
pressed down and running over, but she had never 
yet known the luxury of having enough of what she 
liked. In the home — which is Woman's Sphere — 
there Is always time to think how little time there is. 
Even the career of an incendiary, though hectic, 
often fails to give the illusion of persistent industry. 
The suffragette was so lost in enthusiasm over the 
discovery of a good long road under her feet at last, 
that she presently found herself at Kew. 

If you must drift, there are few places better to 
drift to than Kew Gardens. Only if you go there 
just when the months have reached the bleak curve 
of the hill that runs down into spring, you must know 
where to find the best and most secret snowdrops. 
The suffragette knew. She was very familiar with 
the art of being alone in London. 

You will perhaps not be surprised to learn that 
never once in her life had her leisure meant some one 
else's pleasure. There had never been any one who 

»S5 



I POSE 

would have been in the least interested to know that 
the suffragette had a few hours unbooked. She never 
regretted this fact, because she never noticed it. 
With the exception of Excursion Agents, I should 
think no one ever knew the holiday resorts around 
London better than she did. She could enjoy her- 
self very much indeed sitting seriously on grass, 
watching a world dotted with sentimental cockney- 
ism. It gave her no pang to be one among many 
twos. 

To-day she found the seat that sits forever look- 
ing at the place where the snowdrops should be, and 
only really lives when they come out. And when 
she got there, it was most annoying, she thought of 
the gardener, to the exclusion of everything else. 
After several minutes she found that she had been 
occupied in committing the address she had been 
given to memory. 

" Number Twenty-one Penny Street. Twenty- 
one Penny Street." 

I cannot account for the occasional inconsistency of 
this woman except by reminding you of a certain well- 
known natural phenomenon. Just as a man whose 
arm has been amputated may still suffer from a 
phantom finger-ache, so a woman who has killed her 
heart must, at certain points in her life, feel the pain 
of a heart, as if the dead thing turned in its grave. 
One of the most tragic things about loss is that it is 
never annihilation. 

" This is absurd," thought the suffragette, pulling 

256 



I POSE 

herself together. " I must make a plan of cam- 
paign, as the M.S. Society would say. How am I 
going to start? " 

Brown Borough popularity is a slippery thing to 
seize. You must have a handle to grasp it by. 

A robin appeared, like a fairy, between two snow- 
drops. He did not notice the suffragette, neverthe- 
less he looked self-conscious. He re-arranged a per- 
fectly neat feather, and glanced at his waistcoat to 
see whether its curve was correct. He even tried 
to glance' over his waistcoat at his feet, but this was 
physically impossible. The suffragette loved him 
until she realised that he was in love, on which she 
wearied of him. A chirrup behind her drew her at- 
tention to the lady in the case. 

" I believe I'll have to get hold of the priest," said 
the suffragette. I have told you that she was de- 
void of tact. She never took enough notice of the 
world to sulk when the world was unkind, she was 
not human enough to quarrel. I have seen her give 
great offence to the Chief M.S. by borrowing a 
cigarette in the middle of a tempestuous scene of mu- 
tual reproach. She never reviewed the past when 
arranging for the future, and this, in human rela- 
tions, is a fatal mistake. 

She had an apple and an oatmeal biscuit in her 

bag. In spite of the robin's sentimental drawbacks, 

she shared the biscuit with him and gave him the 

apple core. He finished the biscuit, and when about 

three-quarters through with the apple core, he re- 

257 



I POSE 

membered his affair of the heart. With the la- 
boured altruism of the man in love, he tore himself 
away, and embodied the apple core theme in a little 
song, by way of informing the lady. She came, she 
began. Looking up with her third mouthful, she 
noticed the suffragette. With a hoarse chirp, she 
shot over the horizon. 

" He forgot to warn her," sighed the suffragette. 
" Men are so unimaginative." 

The gentleman came back and finished the apple 
core. 

The suffragette's mind, which was rather sleepy, 
turned to the occasion when she too had shot away 
from destiny, over a blue horizon. 

" But I left Courtesy as an apple core," she said. 
" Men ought to be as good philosophers as robins, 
any day." 

You and I are getting tired of this scene. And 
so was the suffragette. She shook herself. 

" I must wake up," she said. " The incident is 
closed. I'm glad it's closed. But I'm very glad it 
was once open. By mistake I came alive for a little 
while. I don't believe in God, and I don't believe in 
love. But I thank God I have met love — In a 
dream." 

She might possibly have been referring to the 
robin drama. But I don't think she was. 

She put her chin up, and buttoned up the hair shirt, 

and exchanged the snowdrops for a 'bus. 

258 



I POSE 

It was the day after this that the priest was ad- 
dressing his sister's Girls' Club in the Brown 
Borough. He was supplying food for the soul while 
his sister prepared food for the body. The girls 
were listening with the polite though precarious at- 
tention which Brown Borough girls always bring to 
bear on the first three hundred words of any address, 
especially if the addresser be a man. Factory girls 
are amiable creatures with something inborn that 
very closely resembles good manners. Unless you 
are so unfortunate as to stumble upon their sense of 
humour, they will always give you a hearing. Their 
sense of humour is broad, but only touched by cer- 
tain restricted means. If you have a smut on your 
nose, or if your hat is on one side, or if you stammer 
in your speech, or If It is obvious that you have just 
sat in a puddle on alighting from your 'bus, you need 
cherish no hopes, but be sure that every word you say 
is only adding to the comedy of the situation. 

The priest was extremely neat, as usual. His 
piercing eyes under his grey hair looked dignified, 
and he was concealing moral quack remedies in 
gilded anecdotes with marked success. He had 
reached the critical point in a comic story about his 
recent adventures In the tropics, and was just pre- 
paring to lead the roar of amusement, when, over 
the heads of his audience, he saw a face that seemed 
terribly familiar. He finished the story with such 

gravity that nobody dared to smile. 

259 



I POSE 

" How unwise I was to put the idea Into her 
head," he told himself, and, descending from his 
eminence, went to meet her. 

" This is indeed a surprise, yerce, yerce," he said, 
shaking her coldly by the hand. He thought that 
she would be cut to the heart by the fact that he 
failed to qualify the surprise as pleasant. She did 
not notice the omission. She was not accustomed to 
being made very welcome. 

" I have followed your advice," she said. " I 
have come down to ask you for work." 

" How very well-timed," said the priest's sister 
just behind him. " Christopher, Introduce the young 
lady." 

" We will talk of that later," said the priest. " I 
have not finished my address." 

But he virtually had. For he could find nothing 
else to say, although he continued speaking. The 
girls lost interest, and began passing each other let- 
ters and photographs from their chaps. A little 
plain girl, beside whom the suffragette had taken her 
seat, handed her one of these documents. 

I have said that the suffragette had a hard face — 
it is worth noting that no beggar ever begged of her 
unless he was blind. But I suppose she had loved 
women so long and so fiercely that there was some- 
thing in her look that established confidence In the 
women she met. Nobody would have handed a 
love-letter to Mrs. Rust to read, within five minutes 
of her first appearance. 

260 



I POSE 

" The cocoa is ready, Christopher," said the 
priest's sister audibly, from an inner room, 

A remark like this, though trivial, will throw al- 
most any orator off his track. The priest stopped, 
with the resigned sigh of Christian irritation. 

The suffragette handed the letter back to her 
neighbour. " What a nice chap yours must be," she 
said. 

" Are you the young woman wot's come to ply 
the pianner?" asked the girl. 

" I'm not sure," replied the suffragette, with a 
guarded look at the priest. " I rather think I am." 

This was luckily considered amusing, and over the 
cocoa the comments on the new young woman were 
favourable. 

The priest's sister came out from the inner room, 
whence proceeded the loud bubbling squeaks of 
cocoa-drinkers. 

" Now, Christopher," she said, " why didn't you 
tell me you had found a new helper? " 

" I do not know that I have, my dear," replied the 
priest. " This young lady has misinterpreted some- 
thing I said to her." 

'* It's very lucky that she did, then," said the 
priest's sister. " We are so badly in need of a new 
voluntary helper." 

" You oblige me to put the matter baldly, my 
dear," said the priest, keeping his temper with a 
creditable effort. " This is the young lady I men- 
tioned to you last night in the course of conversation. 

261 



I POSE 

All our helpers hitherto have been of the highest 
moral character." 

" From your face . . ." said the priest's sister to 
the suffragette. " I am sure you mean well. I am 
sure you are not wicked. And if you have slipped, 
there is nothing like hard work in the Brown 
Borough to make you forget." 

The suffragette was so much startled to hear her- 
self addressed in this unusual vein that she very 
nearly cried. It is rare to have tears so near so 
horny a surface as hers. 

" My dear . . ." said the priest. " I think you 
forget my position of authority in this parish. You 
also forget the pure young souls committed to your 
care in this club. Yerce, yerce." 

He actually imagined the factory girls to be as 
innocent as himself. To him the words youth and 
innocence were indivisible. 

" Oh, nonsense, Christopher," said his sister. 
" She doesn't necessarily want to help with this club, 
and even if she did she can't convey infection to the 
girls by playing the piano to them." 

" I do not expect she does play the piano," said 
the priest lamely. 

" You do play, don't you? You have such pretty 
hands." 

After that, of course, the suffragette felt as though 

she could have played Strauss to please her. As a 

matter of fact she had little real articulate gift for 

music, but she never forgot a tune she had heard, 

262 



I POSE 

and found no difficulty in rendering the songs that 
always sang in her head, outwardly instead of in- 
wardly. 

The priest's sister was not musical. Nor was she 
critical. She considered that the Brown Borough 
had in this newcomer found something it had lacked. 
The suffragette, who possessed certain secret springs 
of conceit, was to some extent of the same opinion. 
And by the end of the evening the majority of the 
girls shared this view. 

" Do you know a Mrs. Smith? " asked the suffra- 
gette, as she said good-bye. 

" I know perhaps five hundred Mrs. Smiths," said 
the priest's sister. 

" She wears a plush coat, and a baby, and a little 
girl of hers died in October." 

" About two hundred and fifty out of the five hun- 
dred wear plush coats, and babies, and little girls 
that die." 

" I wonder what surnames are for," said the suffra- 
gette pettishly, " since they have ceased to distinguish 
one person from another? " 

" If you come to me to-morrow," said the priest's 
sister, " I will give you the names of various women 
who want visiting. If your Mrs. Smith needs you, 
you will soon find her, if you live in the Brown 
Borough." 

The suffragette was a rash woman. She always 
abode by her own first choice. Before she went to 
see the priest's sister in the morning, she found her- 

263 



I POSE 

self a Brown Borough, lodging. She did this by the 
simple device of knocking on the door of the first 
house she saw that displayed a notice, " Apartment." 

"Now then, wot's the matter?" asked the lady 
who opened the door. 

The suffragette, though impossible to silence, was 
easy to abash. And there is certainly something dis- 
heartening in such a salutation. However, she sug- 
gested that the notice in the window might excuse an 
Intrusion. 

She was very lucky; one always is when one 
doesn't deserve to be so. She might have found a 
room with a brown wet celling curtseying floorward 
under the stress of many rains. She might have 
found a room peopled by a smell incredible, with rags 
stuffed into panes that had been broken by a merciful 
accident. She might have found walls discoloured 
by dark patches that looked like old blood. All these 
things are apt to decorate Woman's Sphere in the 
Brown Borough. 

But the suffragette had, by mistake, knocked on 
the door of the most respectable house in the most 
respectable street in the district. She found a clean, 
though dark room, with a window blinking against 
the sun at a back yard filled with snowdrops. The 
wall-paper talked in a loud voice of tulips: wine- 
coloured tulips trampled on each other and wrestled 
for supremacy over every inch of it. The table- 
cloth and carpet were the colour of terra-cotta, and 
firmly disagreed with every word the wall-paper said. 

264 



I POSE 

Two horse-hair chairs, in sullen brown, looked mood- 
ily at each other across the table. 

The suffragette never asked more than that her 
body might live in a clean place. She kept her mind 
detachable from colour schemes. After all, what is 
my body for but to enclose me? 

" I'll have the room," said the suffragette, as if it 
had been a cake of soap. 

It was like a dream to the landlady, a dream she 
had never been sufficiently feverish to indulge in. 

" You'll have it? " she gasped. 

"Yes. Why not? What's the rent, by the 
way?" 

The landlady, by means of a rapid mental process 
of multiplication, rose manfully to the occasion. 

" All right, fifteen shillings," said the suffragette. 
" I'll come in to-morrow." 

She went to see the priest's sister, but to her mild 
annoyance found the priest instead. 

" My sister suggested that you should visit the 
Wigskys," said the priest, who never bore malice, as 
far as one could see. He never allowed you for a 
moment to forget that he was a Christian. " Mrs. 
Wigsky's latest baby hasn't been christened. Also I 
think the eldest girl must be getting into bad ways; 
she has left the excellent place I found for her." 

" And must I persuade the baby to be chris- 
tened?" 

" Not the child itself. You had better do your 
best to persuade the mother." 

265 



I POSE 

" But supposing she refuses on principle? " 

The priest fixed her with his piercing eye. 
" There can be no principle contrary to the Right," 
he said. " The opposite to Right Is Wrong." 

"How simple!" said the suffragette. "But 
won't Hell be terribly overcrowded?" 

The priest sighed, and certainly with reason. 
But he remembered that he was very broad-minded, 
and that he had often said that everybody had a right 
to their own opinion. He remembered that the soft 
answer that turneth away the fatuity of women had 
found a place even in the New Testament. 

" No one would be more loth than I . . ." he 
said, " to classify as condemned all whose views do 
not coincide with the dictates of the Church. Let us 
rather call them mistaken." 

The suffragette shut In a renewed protest with a 
snap of her jaws. Although she badly needed a 
handle by which to seize the Brown Borough, surely 
there must be other handles than the Church. She 
determined secretly on determination as her unaided 
weapon. 

But she went to see the Wigskys. She found 
them — a large family, red and mutually wrathful in 
an atmosphere of hot smells ancient and modern. 

When she got inside the door she wondered why 
she had come. The baby screaming on its mother's 
breast looked Incorrigibly heathen, the eldest girl 
looked wholly unsuited to any " excellent place " dis- 
covered by the priest. 

266 



I POSE 

*' Wooder you want? " asked the harassed mother, 
a drab and dusty creature, with the used look of 
cold ashes. 

" I've come from Father Christopher . . ." be- 
gan the suffragette, wishing she had come from some 
one else. 

" 'N you can go back to Farver Christopher," 
said Mrs. Wigsky. " Becos I ain't goin' to 'ave 
no more bibies christened. It's 'eaven 'ere, an' 
'eaven there, this biby's goin' ter grow up 'eeven fer 
a chlnge. It carn't get us into worse trouble nor 
wot we've 'ad." 

" I haven't come to bother you," said the suffra- 
gette. " After all, it's your baby, not Father Chris- 
topher's." 

" That's wot I ses," said the mother, slightly mol- 
lified. " Well, if you 'aven't come abaht Biby, wot 
'ave you come for? " 

" I've come because I want to find friends in the 
Brown Borough. If you don't want me, please tell 
me to go." 

The Brown Borough never protests if you surprise 
it; and in any case, Mrs. Wigsky's soul was too 
dead for consistent protest. Also it was certainly 
a change to be visited by one who lacked the visitor's 
apprising eye, who seemed unaware of an unswept 
floor and an unmade bed. 

" As Father Christopher talked about the Brown 

Borough women . . ." said the suffragette, " T 

wanted more and more to know them, because it 

267 



I POSE 

seems to me so splendid to keep going at all in the 
Brown Borough. I must tell you I always love 
women. So you must forgive me for coming." 

" 'Tain't often as lidies come to admire us," said 
Mrs. Wigsky. " They alius comes to show us 'ow 
wrong we are." 

" I'm not a lady," said the suffragette. 

" Ow, yus you are," said the eldest girl, speaking 
for the first time. 

" Are you the girl that's out of a job? " asked the 
suffragette. 

" Yus. Farver Christopher got me a job as gen- 
eral to the lidy oo keeps the post orfice. She give 
me three-an'-six a week an' no food, an' mother ain't 
earnin' now, an' Tom's in 'orsbital, so it weren't 
good enough. I run awiy. She 'it me too, an' mide 
me cerry up the coals. But 'er bein' a lidy, I couldn't 
siy much — I jus' run awiy." 

" I wish you'd hit her back," said the suffragette. 
" And I wish the word ' lady ' had never been in- 
vented." 

" Lidies is lidies, an' generals is generals," said 
Mrs. Wigsky. " Gawd mide it so, an' you carn't 
get over it." 

" I'm sure God never made it so," said the suffra- 
gette. " He made men and women, and nothing 
else. He made man in His own image, and left 
woman to make herself. And she's doing it. 
That's what makes us all so proud to be women." 

" I'm not proud of bein' a woman. I'm sick of 

268 



I POSE 

It," said Mrs. WIgsky; but the girl said, "You do 
talk beautiful, miss. I b'leeve I'm a little bit proud. 
Anywiy, I wouldn't be a man for somefink." 

" Men," sniffed Mrs. Wigsky. " It's men wot 
does all the 'arm. An' yet you earn' get along wiv- 
out 'em altogether. They're so 'elpless." 

(I hope you notice this truth, one of the few un- 
posed truths in this book. Man is potentially a son, 
and woman is potentially a mother; woman depends 
on the dependence of man. The spinster, if pathetic 
at all, Is pathetic because she has no one to look 
after, not because there is no one to look after her. 
Bear In mind that the conventional spinster keeps a 
canary as a substitute for a husband.) 

" All the same," said the suffragette, " men are 
proud of being men, and that is one of the greatest 
virtues. I don't suppose there is a man in London 
who would be general to a Post Office lady at three- 
and-six a week and no food." 

This was thought to be supremely witty, and the 
suffragette rose to depart on the crest of a ripple of 
popularity. The girl followed her half-way down- 
stairs. 

" You fink that I was roight then to chuck that 
job, miss? " 

The suffragette at that moment parted company 
with Father Christopher. 

" Certainly I think you were right. It's very 
wrong to take less money than you're worth. I'd 

rather lend your mother money to get on with until 

269 



I POSE 

you can get a worth-while job than let a friend of 
mine go so cheap as three-and-six a week. You can 
give your mother this address, and tell her I'll come 
to see her again very soon." 

As she reached the first landing, she became aware 
of a fresh twist in the maze. I think drama of a 
rather sombre variety is the very life of the Brown 
Borough, and I defy you to thread its streets or 
climb its stairways for half a day without meeting 
some Thing you never met before. 

The doorway on the first landing was practically 
filled by a woman, whose most surprising charac- 
teristic was that her right eye was filled with blood. 
The blood was running down on to the breast of her 
dress. 

" I'm feelin' that queer," said the woman. " It's 
the sight o' blood alius mikes me queer." 

" You must let me help you," said the suffragette. 
" You must let me put you on your bed." 

The woman laughed and remained swaying in the 
doorway. 

*' Bedder standen' . . ." she mumbled hysterically. 

She was an enormous woman, and effectually 
blocked the doorway. For one mad moment the 
suffragette meditated climbing over her. An obsta- 
cle always had an irresistible fascination for her. 

" Don't be so silly," said the suffragette. " Let 
me come in at once. I am here to help. Stand 
aside." 

The woman laughed again, and her head sud- 

270 



I POSE 

denly lolled down upon her breast. A little drip 
of blood ran down upon the floor. 

" You are making a mess on the floor," said the 
suffragette. 

There was a magic in the words. I suppose their 
power lay in their utter futility. The woman stood 
aside. 

" Now let me get you to bed," said the suffra- 
gette as she entered. But there was no bed. 

There were a dresser, a small table, and a chair. 
There was also a man, noisily asleep upon the 
chair. 

" Ran me eye agin the corner of the tible," said 
the woman. 

" How very unlucky," said the suffragette, " con- 
sidering the table's practically the only thing in the 
room. Except the man." 

She took the back of the chair and tipped it for- 
ward. She tilted it to such an angle that nobody 
in their senses could have remained seated in it. 
But a guardian angel seems to look after the drunk 
at the expense of the sober. When because she was 
not a professional weight-lifter, the suffragette had 
to let the chair revert to its natural position, the man 
was still comfortably asleep. 

The woman fainted in the corner. 

"Wake up, you damned pig!" said the suffra- 
gette, with the utmost strength of her soft voice, 
and she struck his shoulder with all the weight of a 

perfectly useless fist. 

271 



I POSE 

"Shall I fetch a policeman?" asked Miss Wig- 
sky. 

" The Law's no good," said the suffragette frown- 
ing. " I don't believe there is a law against a man 
being drunk in the only chair. Do you think you 
could borrow a cushion or two from your mother, 
so that we could make the woman comfy on the 
floor?" 

By the time Miss Wigsky returned with the relic 
of a pillow, the suffragette had bathed the blood 
from the eye. 

" Woz this?" inquired the woman, opening the 
surviving eye upon the appearance of Miss Wig- 
sky. " Woz this? Fillers? Tike 'em awiy. I 
'aven't bin to bed in the diytime for twenty years, 
nor I ain't goin' to begin now . . ." 

" You must lie down," said the suffragette. 
"And I will fetch the doctor to sew up your 
eye." 

" Bless yer . . ." crowed the invalid. " S'long 
as I've got legs to walk to the doctor on, you kin 
bet yer life 'e won't walk to me. I'll go'n see 'im, 
soon's as I stop bein' all of a tremble." 

" I'll come with you." 

" As you please." 

Miss Wigsky escaped. 

" Why do you allow that man to be drunk in 

here? " asked the suffragette after a pause. 

'E don't arsk my leave." 

Is he your husband? " 

272 






I POSE 

" No. 'E is in a manner of speakin'. But I 
wouldn't really marry a soppy bloke like thet." 

" Then why do you have soppy blokes crowding 
you out of your own furniture ? " 

" Ow, one must 'ave a man about the plice. 
Feels more 'omely-like." 

" Does he work for you? " 

" I don't fink." 

" Is he very good to you? " 

The woman, not unnaturally, began to get restive. 
" 'Oo ye're gettin' at? Nat'rally a man ain't 
soothin' syrup when 'e come 'ome as my young 
man come 'ome an hour ago. 'E's better'n 
some." 

There was a long silence. Then the suffragette 
said, " Women seem to be extraordinarily cheap in 
the market. They hire themselves out to the man 
who hits the hardest. It makes one almost tired of 
being a woman." 

" Look 'ere . . ." said the patient wrathfully, but 
she stopped there. Presently she sat up and said, 
" I'm goin' to doctor's now. And if you ain't still 
too tired, miss, perhaps you'll see me as fur as the 
'orspital . . ." 

So the suffragette laid hold of the Closed Door 
of the Brown Borough, by the handle of her fanatic 
determination. She never saw the impossibility of 
victory. It was the earliest of the early spring, and 
there was hope in the air. For many weeks hope 
was her only luxury. With it she sweetened her 

273 



I POSE 

bread and margarine when she rose, to the tune of 
it she munched her nightly tripe and onions. She 
saw the mirage of the end in sight, and with her great 
faith she almost made it real. She was a blind 
optimist where women were concerned. 

On the initiative of the priest's sister, she attended 
the Church Girls' Club three evenings a week. On 
her own initiative she played the Church false, and 
established in its own field of labour, behind its back, 
the foundation of her task. 

It was originally Miss Wigsky's fault. Miss 
Wigsky was a girl of practical energy, a warring 
spirit, a potential suffragette. She had long been a 
militant resister of the Church Club ideal, but when 
the suffragette became one of Its regular adherents, 
Miss Wigsky joined it at once. Hers was the active 
responsibility for what followed, and 'Tilda's the 
passive. I think I have mentioned 'Tilda before, 
though not by name. She was a small white crea- 
ture who had committed the absurdity of losing her 
heart to the suffragette at first sight, and had sealed 
her admiration by laying bare the letter of her chap 
at their first meeting. 

The moment of cocoa-drinking was always the 
moment of confidences. It was during this com- 
paratively peaceful time that the suffragette made 
friends, and it was at this point that 'Tilda one even- 
ing approached her. 

" Jenny Wigsky's a funny gel," said 'Tilda. 
" She's bin talkin' about you, miss. I got a new 

274 



I POSE 

job the other day, very little money — piece-work — 
on'y shillin' a diy if I worlc ever so 'ard. I ses to 
Jenny, ' I'm a good gel I am, to tike less money than 
I'm worth just to 'elp my muvver.' But Jenny ses 
I'm a very bad gel — she ses you ses as it's wicked 
to tike bad money." 

" I didn't say it was wicked — I wouldn't use the 
word," said the suffragette. " But I do think it's 
selfish. Every time a girl takes too little money, 
she may be forcing another girl to take less. You 
know it's partly your fault that women's wages are 
so bad. You can feel now that you've had a share 
in the work of sweating women, 'Tilda." 

" Didn't I tell you ? " said Miss Wigsky. " Why 
don't you do as I do, an' stick out for ten? " 

" But you're not gettin' it," objected 'Tilda. 

" I'm goln' to get It, I am. I'm goln' back to my 
ol' tride — box-miking. I left it becos the work 
was so 'ard, but the money's better." 

" I don't mind how hard people work, as long as 
they get paid for it," said the suffragette. " Of 
course, you have to do good work for good money. 
What I mean is that I think it's just as dishonest to 
take too little money as it Is to do too little 
work." 

" But wot's the good of one standin' out? " 

*' Very little good. But more good in a dozen 
standing out and more still in a hundred." 

" Le's start a sasslcty," suggested the strenuous 
Miss Wigsky. " You could be the Preserdink, miss, 

275 



I POSE 

an' I'll 'elp yer. We'll call ourselves the ' Suffra- 
gette Gels,' an' we won't allow none of us to tike 
less money than ten shillin'." 

" Garn . . ." said 'Tilda. " Thet's a Tride Un- 
ion, thet is. A man's gime. If I chuck my job, 
'oo's goin' to keep me til I get a better one. Muv- 
ver? I don't fink . . ." 

" I will," said the suffragette. " If there's any- 
body here earning less than ten shillings a week, 
I'll give them seven-and-six a week for a fortnight 
if they have to chuck their job, and I'll also give a 
prize of seven-and-six at the end of the fortnight to 
the girl who's increased her wages the most." 

No plan could ever have been less planned. She 
thought of it as she spoke of it, a most rash method. 
But Miss Wigsky immediately set to work to hew 
it into shape. 

" You'll 'ave to arringe for piece-work, miss," she 
said. " Anybody on piece-work could increase their 
wiges by working for twenty-four hours a diy, but it 
wouldn't be fair." 

" Nobody must work after eight at night," said 
the suffragette. 

"An' if two or three gets the sime rise?" sug- 
gested Miss Wigsky. 

" I'll give them each seven-and-six," said the 
suffragette. 

Of the twenty girls present, three were earning 

over ten shillings and entered a different class of the 

competition, working for the prize without the main- 

276 



I POSE 

tenance, if a rise should be found possible without 
loss of employment. Of the remaining seventeen, 
two refused to compete, and one was too small to be 
worth more than her present earnings. The other 
fourteen determined on an immediate attack on their 
employers. Chances were discussed instead of 
dances for the rest of the evening. 

" My boss'll siy — the money's there — you kin 
tike it or leave it. 'E's said that before." 

" My boss'll smile — 'e alius calls me 'Tip-a-wink, 
becos I'm the smallest gel there. 'E's never cross 
— my boss ain't." 

" I think I'll win the prize easy — don't know why 
I never thought of it before. Buster — my boss — 
ses I've got the 'andiest 'ands wiv the bristles as ever 
'e see." 

"My missus'll siy — there's 'undreds of sluts in 
the Borough twice as good as you, an' I like yer im- 
perence, an' you kin tike the sack wivout notice. 
She alius calls me a slut — we won't be sorry to 
part." 

" I shall stick to the fewer work, an' tike up 
curlin' an' sewin', as well as the knotting. I bin 
too lizy up to now, but I've got an aunt in the tride 
as 'ud learn me in no time." 

At closing time the priest drew the suffragette 
aside. 

" I heard Jane Wigsky's voice constantly raised 
in the dining-room this evening. I want your opin- 
ion of that girl. Yerce, yerce. She seems to me 

»77 



I POSE 

rough and coarse, and I am tempted to think she is 
a disturbing Influence in the Ckib." 

" She's not so disturbing as I am," said the suffra- 
gette, with a spasm of conscience. 

" Oh, don't say that," said the priest, whose sis- 
ter had been readjusting his manners. " Don't be 
disheartened, you will soon get into our ways, yerce, 
yerce. But to return to Jane WIgsky, I do not Hke 
the girl. She is impertinent and self-assured. I 
feel sure she puts ideas Into the girls' heads." 

" I shouldn't think an idea more or less would 
make much difference." 

The priest sighed. I am not surprised. I quite 
admit that the suffragette was an infuriating person. 
I yield to none in my admiration for any one who 
could manage to keep their temper with her. 

" You know I mean harmful Ideas. She has no 
staying power. She left excellent employment, ap- 
parently simply through a whim. Her mistress, the 
postmistress, is a great friend of mine. In short, I 
consider the girl undesirable, and we are thinking of 
asking her to leave the Club." 

The suffragette became red. 

" I'm sorry the postmistress is a friend of yours," 
she said. " Because she can't be a very admirable 
friend. She herself admits that she only paid the 
girl three-and-six a week, with no food except a cup 
of tea at mid-day." 

" Poor wages, yerce, yerce. But far better than 

idleness." 

378 



I POSE 

" Infinitely worse," said the suffragette. 

A rather feverish silence fell for a moment. I 
think the priest said a prayer. At any rate he 
thought he did. 

" Surely you have some sympathy with our aims 
in this Club. Surely you agree that it is a worthy 
ideal to try to raise the level of the young woman- 
hood of the Borough. Surely you see that we can- 
not do this unless we keep the girls in good uplifting 
company. Jane Wigsky is a bad girl. One must 
draw the line between good and bad." 

" One may draw a line, but one needn't build a 
barrier. And even to draw a line, one should have 
very good sight." 

" I think I hardly need your advice on the 
management of a parish I have served for twenty- 
two years. If this were my Club I should re- 
quest you to find some other outlet for your en- 
ergies. But my sister is very obstinate. Good 
evening." 

A certain amount of success attended the efforts 
of the Suffragette Girls. By the end of that week, 
three girls had been given a rise for the asking, the 
extent of it varying from sixpence to two shillings. 
Several had got a promise of a rise when work 
should be less slack, only three had taken the drastic 
step of leaving their employment. The piece-work- 
ers with few exceptions were working for a wage 
which seemed unalterable. An envelope-folder 

raised her earnings from three halfpence a thousand 

279 



I POSE 

to twopence. But as a rule there is no labour groove 
so deep as the piece-worker's. 

It was on the Thursday night before Good 
Friday that the suffragette, dressed in a dress- 
ing-gown, sat before her fire remembering the sim- 
plest character in this simple book — Scottie 
Brown. 

" It's dog-stealing," she thought, " no less. Miss 
Brown may return to the Island any time crying out 
for Scottie to come and comfort her. And Scottie 
will be languishing in England, undergoing quaran- 
tine. We are dog-thieves." 

The " we " sent a little heat-wave over the place 
where her heart should have been. 

She had been working very hard all day, walking 
about the Brown Borough collecting its worries. 
She was so tired that she could not rest, could not 
go to bed, could not do anything except sit on her 
hearthrug and think feverishly of things that did not 
matter. 

Outwardly the suffragette, when in her dressing- 
gown, and with her hair drawn into a small smooth 
plait, approached more nearly her vocation than un- 
der any other circumstances. She was a nun, dedi- 
cated to an unknown God. 

" A person to see you," said the landlady, and 

flung open the door. The suffragette shot to her 

feet, with a momentary terrible suspicion that the 

landlady had said " parson." Visions of a bashful 

curate brought face to face with a militant suffra- 

280 



I POSE 

gette in her dressing-gown, were, however, swept 
away by the entrance of Miss Wigsky. 

" It's a shime," remarked the visitor loudly, 

discarding the convention of greeting. 

" Sure to be," said the suffragette, sinking down 
upon the hearthrug again. " Nearly everything's 
that kind of shame. Sit down and tell me." 

" I toF you I'd got a job, you know, at Smiff's — 
boot-uppers. A lucky find it were, I thought, ten 
shillin' a week an' I was to be learnt 'ow to work 
a machine. 'E ses 'e thought I was a likely sort on 
Monday when I went, but 'e ses as 'e was goin' to 
learn me somethink, an' 'e wanted a special sort of 
gel, like, 'e ars't for references. Knowin' as 'e was 
a religious sort of gentleman, an' give 'caps of money 
to the Church, I tol' 'im Farver Christopher for my 
reference, because Farver Christopher's known 
Muvver sence she married, an' alius said 'e would 
'elp 'er whenever 'e could. So when I went agine 
yesterday, to Smiff's, 'e ses as 'ow Farver Chris- 
topher 'adn't spoke well of me — said I was unre- 
liable, an' never stuck to one job. So Mr. Smiff ses 
in thet cise I wouldn't suit, but 'e ses as I looked likely 
'e'd give me a job as packer at six shillin'. I ses as 
I couldn' afford to tike so little money, an' I tol' 'im 
about you an' the Suffragette Gels. 'E ses you 
oughter be ashimed of yoursel', an' 'e'd write an' 
tell Farver Christopher as 'ow 'is Club was an 'otbed 
of somethink or other. I 'ites Farver Christopher 
— curse 'im — an' 'e miking belief to be so 'elpful. 

28 1 



I POSE 

I was in my first job free years, an' jus' because I 

chucked the job 'e found for me, 'e does me 

dirty like this. Curse 'im." 

" Don't," said the suffragette. " Suffragettes 
don't waste breath in cursing — even when there 
seems to be nothing to do but curse." 

" This evenin' . . ." continued Miss Wigsky, " I 
went to the Ckib to see if you was there, though it 
wasn't your night. Farver Christopher turned me 
out, 'e did. 'E's turned out fifteen of the gels, an' 
tol' them never to come back no more. 'E found out 
from the others which was the suffragette gels, an' 
turned 'em out. I stood up to 'im, and arsk' 'im 
wotever we've done that's wrong, there ain't no 'arm, 
I ses, in tryin' to get a livin' wige. I arsk' 'im 'ow 
'e'd like to Hve under seven shillin' a week. 'E ses 
as 'ow God 'ad called us to this stite of life, an' it 
was wicked to try an' alter it. 'E ses as women are 
pide what they're worth, an' God mide rich an' poor 
an' men an' women, an' never meant the poor to be 
rich, or women to be pretending they was as good 
as men ... I spit at 'im, miss, I 'ope you'll excuse 
me. 

" I'll excuse you," said the suffragette, " though 
I don't think it was a very artistic protest. I am 
most awfully sorry for you, Jenny, but I'm not sur- 
prised. For you know when you became a suffra- 
gette you agreed to fight, and now you've found out 
what you're fighting, that's all. Suffragettes are just 
soldiers — only more sober — and when they meet 

2S2 



I POSE 

the enemy, they just get more determined, not more 
excited. If you were a soldier and got wounded, 
we should be sorry for you, but also rather proud of 
you. We must collect the suffragette girls some- 
where else, and make the army grow." 

" I don't believe you can, miss. I went to see 
'Tilda, an' she was pretty near soppy about it. She's 
piece-work, an' earn' get 'er boss to rise 'er, so she 
ain't done nothink to be turned out of the Club for, 
she ses. She ses as 'ow she won't never 'ave nuffink 
more to do wiv them suffragettes. Then I met Lil, 
the tow-'aired gel — she was drunk — at the corner 
of the Delta. She puts it all on you, miss." 

" Do you feel like that? " asked the suffragette. 

" Ow well, in a manner o' speakin', it wouldn' 
'ave 'appened if it 'adn't bin for you, miss. But I 
don't feel sore against you, not really. You did it 
for the best. You miy be right about fightin' the 
enemy, on'y the enemy's too strong. P'r'aps Farver 
Christopher's right, an' God mide women to starve 
till they marry, an' get beaten till they die . . ." 

" If there is a God," said the suffragette in a low 
voice, " the only possible conclusion is that he is an 
Anti. Still, even a God can be fought." 

" Ow, I'm sick o' fightin'," said Miss Wigsky. 
" I shall go orf wiv my chap, though 'e is out of 
work . . ." 

The gardener was at 2 1 Penny Street, waiting for 

an answer to his message. To pass the time he had 

283 



I POSE 

found work, or rather work had found him, for he 
was a man of luck. Eventually, instead of an an- 
swer, Mrs. Paul Rust called on him. 

"How's your son?" asked the gardener, who 
was pleased to meet some one who had met the 
suffragette. 

Beneath his superficial " unscathed " pose, there 
was a layer of deep faithfulness. He knew by now 
that the suffragette was not worthy of the love of a 
sober Assistant Secretary to a Society Which Be- 
lieved Itself of Great Importance (one of his 
latest practical poses). But the thing one knows 
makes no difference to the thing one feels, if 
one is young. The gardener was under the impres- 
sion that his wisdom had dethroned the suffra- 
gette from her eminence, but his heart, with 
the obstinacy peculiar to hearts, continued to look 
up. 

" My son is bad. He gets no stronger. There 
is no reason why he shouldn't get up, except that he 
isn't strong enough to walk." 

" I'm sorry." 

" I'm not," said Mrs. Rust automatically, and 
stood checked by such a decided lie. 

*' What annoys me is Courtesy," she said after 

a pause. " Courtesy indeed, she hasn't treated me 

fairly. She had the impertinence to tell me last week 

that she was engaged to that ridiculous young Wise 

she picked up at Greyville. Engaged indeed, it's 

stuff and nonsense, pure defiance. She's treated me 

284 



I POSE 

as a sort of matrimonial agent. I wasn't paying her 
£200 a year to look for a husband." 

" No," agreed the gardener. " Then why don't 
you forbid the banns?" 

Poor Mrs. Rust's helplessness in the hands of 
Courtesy rose vaguely to her memory. " Stuff and 
nonsense," she said. " I haven't yet decided what 
steps I shall take in the matter. There is no imme- 
diate hurry. She has suggested letting the matter 
drop until Samuel is better. She has many failings, 
but I think she is fond of me." 

" That's a very attractive failing," admitted the 
gardener. 

" I didn't come here to discuss Courtesy with 
you," snapped Mrs. Rust, suddenly remembering 
her temper. " I came because Samuel wanted me 
to come. He seems to be under delusions about you, 
he thinks he owes you gratitude. In fact — prob- 
ably under the influence of delirium — he once said 
you financed his hotel. As a matter of fact I 
financed it myself, it owes its present success to me." 

" It's awfully good of you to come all this way 
to bring me misdirected gratitude," said the gardener. 

" Stuff and nonsense," said Mrs. Rust. " I 
wouldn't stir an Inch out of my way to make you 
more conceited than you are. But that is the worst 
of having a son, you have to pay occasional atten- 
tion to his wishes. Besides, Courtesy brought me up 
to town and gave the address to the chauffeur, so I 
really wasn't consulted. Samuel wishes to see you. 

285 



I POSE 

All the time he was ill he was asking for the Tra-la-la 
young man, and now I find he means you. I might 
have said that right at the beginning, and not have 
wasted all this time listening to your chatter." 

" I'm very glad you didn't," said the gardener. 
*' I couldn't bear a caller who came straight to the 
point in five words and then left." 

" Stuff and nonsense," said Mrs. Rust. " Are you 
coming? " 

It was half-past three on Good Friday afternoon. 
There is something about that little Easter cluster 
of Sundays that weighs your heart down, If you are 
in postless London, and expecting a letter. 

" Where is your son? " he asked. 

" In Hampshire, In the Cottage Hospital, near 
the Red Place. You could put up at the Red Place. 
Samuel, being a fool, said you might have the big 
black and white room on the first floor. He might 
have let it for five guineas over Bank Holiday." 

" What time is the train? " asked the gardener. 

" My car is at the door. The chauffeur is a dan- 
gerous lunatic, and there seems to me to be every 
likelihood that the back wheel will come off before 
we get out of London. But — are you coming? " 

So the gardener came. Seated behind the danger- 
ous lunatic, over the dangerous back wheel, and be- 
side a hostess in a musical comedy motor bonnet, he 
followed once more the road that led to the gods. 

He had left his address with Miss Shakespeare for 
the forwarding of letters. 

286 



I POSE 

The great surprise of spring awaited them outside 
London. There were lambs under a pale sky, and 
violets under pale green hedges. Gnarled trees, like 
strong men's muscles, curved out of roadside copses, 
lit with a green radiance. There was lilac smiling 
across the cottage gardens, there were wall-flowers 
blotted dark against whitewashed walls. But when 
they reached the pines and heath they left the spring 
behind. Only the larches preached its gospel. 

" You had better come and see Samuel first," said 
Mrs. Rust. " He is anxious to see you. He always 
was a fool." 

So they passed the Red Place. It flared out at 
them along a sombre ride that cut the woods in two. 

" Samuel says his gods look after the place as well 
as any manager, while he is away. But of course 
he has a chef now, and a competent bureau clerk." 

" I suppose you couldn't ask the gods to dish up 
the dinner, or make out the bills," admitted the gar- 
dener regretfully. " But I wonder if there's room 
for the gods as well as the chef and the competent 
bureau clerk." 

" Stuff and nonsense," said Mrs. Rust. " A good 
dinner's worth all the gods in mythology." 

They drove up to their destination. 

The cottage hospital had only recruited to the 
service of the sick in later life. For a hundred years 
or so it had been the haunt of the wicked landowner. 
Worldly squires' wives had given tea in its paved 
pergola to curates' wives in their best hats. But 

287 



I POSE 

as the house grew older it reformed. Its walls, 
steeped in the purple village gossip of a century, now 
echoed only to the innocent if technical prattle of 
nurses. The only person who walked in its garden 
was Sister : she threw crumbs to the goldfish as se- 
verely as though the crumbs were for their good. 
For the blessing which the house inherited from its 
past was its garden. A small garden, like a cut 
emerald, but reflecting all other jewels. It was a 
garden that tried to enshrine sombre peace amid the 
vivid riot of spring. Its high clipped hedges drew 
decorously angular reflections in the pools. Brown 
wallflowers hid the feet of the hedges. The lilacs 
seemed somehow turned to half mourning by the 
proximity of a copper beech. A veil of tree seeds 
spinning down the wind fell diagonally across the 
garden. The pink horse chestnut was very sym- 
metrical. Only the little saxifrages protested against 
the geometrical correctness of the paving-stones, and 
forget-me-nots sang a shrill song in blue from the 
restraining chaperonage of red pottery tubs. A little 
cupid with a dislocated hip played a noiseless flute 
from a pedestal. The garden was a prig, but it 
was the sort of prig that makes you wonder whether 
after all it is worth while to be so exquisitely sinful. 
They found Samuel Rust, who was the only pa- 
tient in the hospital, the centre of a mist of nurses. 
He was lying in the shade of a great smooth yew 
pyramid with a military-looking bird fashioned on 

the top of it. Samuel Rust, that unusual young man, 

288 



I POSE 

could never be much paler than he had been when 
in health, but he was grey now, rather than white, 
and his round sequins of eyes were set in a deeper 
setting. 

" The Tra-la-la young man," he said as the gar- 
dener approached. " I have been wondering why 
I wanted to see you." 

" So have I," said Mrs. Rust, who, after a mo- 
mentary lapse into a maternal expression, had turned 
her back on the invalid. 

" Let's pretend I'm just an ordinary sick-bed vis- 
itor, then," suggested the gardener. " One never 
knows why — or whether — one wants to see that 
sort of visitor. In that case I have to begin: — 
Dear Mr. Rust, I hope you are much better." 

" Still posing," said Samuel. " What is your lat- 
est attitude?" 

" I never pose," said the gardener. " I have a 
horror of the pose. My mind's eye sometimes 
changes the spectacles it wears, but that's all. I now 
find that all along the gods were intending me to 
be a business man." 

" Hard luck," said Samuel. 

The nurses had melted away, and Mrs. Rust fol- 
lowed them into the house. The sun was making 
ready for his triumph in the west and a diffident 
moon perched on the peak of the pink horse chest- 
nut. 

" Perhaps one ought to have foreseen the gods' 

intention of making you a business man," said Sam- 

289 



I POSE 

uel, " for you certainly carried out the unscrupulous 
deceiver part with wonderful success - — That is — 
jolly well — what? My Red Place now sings a 
hymn of praise to you, to the tune of ten pounds a 
week — clear." 

" Don't mention it," said the gardener. " It 
didn't need much unscrupulous deceiving to persuade 
your mother to get her heart to work. And, to tell 
you the truth, the end was rather drowned in the 
means on that journey. I got so busy living — 1 
only thought of you when absolutely necessary." 

" I didn't expect you to wear my image graven on 
your heart, what? " said Samuel. " You are young, 
and living should certainly be your business. Is that 
why you said you were a business man? I have 
often thought that being young and only lately set 
up in business, you had no business to saddle your- 
self with a wife." 

" No business whatever," admitted the gardener. 

" Then why did you? " 

" I didn't." 

" Good heavens," said Samuel fretfully, " why 
was I born in such a cryptic age? " 

" The truth is — I spoke in a futurist sense when 
I called her my wife." 

" In other words, you lied," suggested Samuel. 
" You just took a little tame woman on a string for 
a trip, as many better men have done before you? " 

" I dragged a woman by force across the Atlantic, 
and then she ran away. She ran back home." 

290 



I POSE 

" The silly ass," said Mr. Rust Irritably. " Why 
did she do that?" 

" The attitude of women towards force . . ." said 
the gardener sententiously, " Is not what psychol- 
ogists make It out to be. By some of the boolcs I've 
read, I would have thought that women worshipped 
brute force; I would have thought that they kept 
their hair long specially in order to be dragged about 
by it." 

" I have known very few women really well," said 
Samuel; " and the ones I knew didn't wear hair that 
they could be dragged about by. I should think the 
final disappearance of your post-Impressionist wife 
was rather a good riddance." 

" It was neither good nor a riddance. In the 
same futurist sense I still call her my wife. It's an 
effort, I admit, to continue to be fond of a militant 
suffragette, and yet somehow It's an effort I can't 
help making." 

Courtesy appeared, her hair an Impudent rival to 
the sunset. 

" I've brought your book from the library," she 
said. " I couldn't get any books by Somethingevsky, 
as you asked, so I brought The Rosary. 

" I ought to congratulate you on your engage- 
ment," said the gardener. "In fact — Mrs. Rust 
being out of earshot — I do." 

" Thank you," said Courtesy, looking wonderfully 

pretty. " I wish everybody in the world was as 

happy as I am, though of course marriage is an 

291 



I POSE 

awful risk. How's your young woman, gardener? " 

" As militant as ever," said the gardener. " I'm 
expecting a letter from her any day, or a telegram 
any minute." 

" Why, is she coming down here? " 

" Probably," said the gardener. He had abso- 
lutely no grounds for his confidence except the 
ground of youth, and that, of course, is only a quick- 
sand. 

But the funny thing was she came. 

For she cried all her current stock of militancy 
away on Thursday night, and by three o'clock on 
Good Friday afternoon she was on the door-step of 
21 Penny Street. 

" Even if slavery and polygamy become the fash- 
ion," she argued characteristically, " Scottie Brown 
will still be wrongfully detained in quarantine." 

It was not to Scottie Brown that her thoughts 
turned when the maid told her that Mr. Gardener 
had gone to the country for Easter. 

" But I must see him," said the suffragette, who 
was a little drunk with the bitter beverage of tears. 

" It's impossible," said the maid. " I tell you — 
he's away." 

The word " impossible " as usual acted as a chal- 
lenge. 

" Might I have his address?" said the caller. 

After consultation with Miss Shakespeare the ad- 
dress was produced, and the suffragette's decision 

made. 

292 



I POSE 

" The Red Place . . . His friend lives there — 
Mrs. Rust's son. Anyway there's no harm In going 
to a country hotel for Easter." 

It was quite an advance for the suffragette to be 
human enough to consider whether there was any 
harm or not. 

So she went home and had a ten minutes' Inter- 
view with the mustard-coloured portmanteau, and 
then she put It and herself Into a third-class carriage 
marked Girton Magna. 

At sunset she arrived at the Red Place, and by 
luck extraordinary managed to procure a small attic 
which the tide of holiday-makers had passed by. 

She saw the gardener first at dinner-time, and he 
looked almost as Incredible to her as she did to him. 
It always surprises me to see a person looking ex- 
actly like themselves after absence. 

When the gardener first saw the suffragette, he 
swallowed a spoonful of soup which was very much 
too hot, and rose. Courtesy was In the middle of 
a remark, and looked surprised to see him go. 

*' I knew I should hear or see something of you 
soon," said the gardener, shaking the suffragette's 
hand as usual an excessive number of times. " And 
yet I'm awfully surprised too," admitted the suffra- 
gette. 

"Just an Easter holiday?" suggested the gar- 
dener carelessly. " But what luck you chose the 
Red Place." 

" It wasn't exactly luck. I knew you were here." 

293 



I POSE 

Tears had been trembling in the gardener's eyes 
since the swallowing of the soup, he very nearly 
shed them now. 

" Waiter," he called, " move that lady's place to 
our table." 

The suffragette was excited and flushed. She 
looked almost pretty. 

" I can't imagine why I came," she said when the 
change was effected and greetings had been ex- 
changed. " I think I must have come in delirium. 
The woman I used to be never comes into the coun- 
try except on business, and, in the case of friends, 
makes a principle of ' out of sight, out of mind.' " 

"I hope you left that woman behind — per- 
manently," said the gardener. 

*' No. That's the worst of it. They're both 
here. Each acts as conscience while the other one's 
in power. Why wasn't one brought into the world 
by oneself? " 

" Why, weren't you? " asked Courtesy; " were you 
twins?" 

" I still am. One of me is quite a good sort, 
really, almost an ' Oh, my dear ' girl. She is the 
one who was described in the paper as ' Boadicea 
Smith, a young woman of prepossessing appearance.' 
The reporter went on to say that the name was prob- 
ably assumed — (which it was) — and that he knew 
who I really was — (which he didn't). He hinted 

that I was a deluded patrician incog. Do you know, 

294 



I POSE 

I treasure that paragraph as if it were a love-letter. 
It's the only compliment I ever had." 

" I should like to shake the hand of that reporter," 
said the gardener. 

" But after that he referred to me all through as 
' Smith,' without prefix, which is the sign of a crim- 
inal." 

" The puppy! " exclaimed the gardener. 

"What were you doing to get into the paper?" 
asked Courtesy sternly. " I never get into the pa- 
per." 

" It's inconceivable that you should get into the 
paper. Courtesy dear," said the gardener, " except 
when you get born or married or dead." 

" It'd be like a sultana in a seed-cake," said the 
suffragette, " or like a sunrise at tea-time. Or as 
if a Forty-nine 'bus went to the Bank." 

I really think she was a little delirious, and per- 
haps she felt it herself, for she added apologetically, 
" I always think Forty-nine is such an innocent 'bus, 
it never knows the City," 

Next morning it was raining in the persistently 
militant sort of way reserved by the weather for 
public holidays. 

" A pity," said the gardener at breakfast. " I 

meant to take you over to the village to introduce 

you to Mr. Rust. And there are no 'buses or taxis 

here." 

" Let's dispense with the 'buses and taxis," sug- 

295 



I POSE 

gested the suffragette. " Let's forget London and 
get country-wet." 

" You'll catch your death of cold," said the gar- 
dener delightedly, and presently they started. 

" I don't really want to be introduced to your 
friend," said the suffragette. " Only I wanted a 
chance to speak to you alone. Do you know, be- 
neath a militant exterior I am horribly shy? " 

" It's obvious," retorted the gardener. 

"Is it?" asked the suffragette, annoyed, and re- 
lapsed into silence for a moment. 

" I wanted to tell you . . ." she began again 
presently, " that I beg your pardon for coming here. 
It's unforgivable of me. You know, as regards men, 
I'm not a woman at all; I haven't the unselfish in- 
stincts that other women have. I came because 
I had — reached the limit — and I wanted a 
friend . . ." 

*' Well, you didn't come far wrong," said the gar- 
dener. " I love you." 

*' I didn't think of your feelings at all, which is 
only another proof that it is no good your loving 



me." 



" May I take the risk?" 

The suffragette stopped, and stood leaning against 
the rain-whipped wind. Rain was trapped in the 
mesh of her soft hair. She clenched her fists upon 
her breast. 

" Won't you believe me . . ." she said, " when I 
tell you it would be best to break up that poor little 

296 



I POSE 

dream of yours — as I have broken mine. I told 
you once that I had somehow been born the wrong 
side of the ropes in the race. One can't love across 
a barrier." 

" Love is not a dream," said the gardener. *' It's 
your barrier that's a dream. Why don't you try 
breaking that? " 

" You are a man, little gardener, and I am a 
thing. Not a bad thing, really, but certainly not 
a woman. And even a thing can reach the point 
which I have reached, the point at which there seems 
nothing to do but grope and cry ..." 

They walked a little way in silence. 

" I seem to have come to the edge of the world 
by myself," she went on. " And I can't go on — 
by myself. Oh, gardener, couldn't we be friends 
without being lovers? " 

'* That has been suggested before," said the gar- 
dener slowly. " And it has never succeeded. But 
— we — might — try . . ." 

All the rest of the way to the village I suppose 
they were practising being friends and not lovers. 
For neither spoke a word. 

" So this is the militant suffragette," said Samuel 
Rust, who was sitting in the hospital sitting-room. 
" I am most interested to meet you. T have long 
wished to meet a suffragette to ask her why she 
wanted the vote." 

" Why do men want it? " 

" Personally I don't." 

297 



I POSE 

" Personally I do," said the suffragette. " And 
mine is as good an answer as yours," 

" Both answers are very poor," admitted Samuel. 
" You want the vote so badly that you think it worth 
while to become hysterical over it." 

" There is not much hysteria in the movement, 
only hysteria is the thing that strikes a hysterical 
press as most worthy of note. What hysteria there 
is, is a result — not a cause. Women never invented 
hysteria. How should we be anything but irrespon- 
sible, since you have taken responsibility from us? 
If we are bitter, you must remember that somebody 
mixed the dose. If the womanliness you admire is 
dead, bear in mind that nothing can be dead without 
being killed." 

" But who Is your enemy? Who are your mur- 
derers? I have never noticed that the majority of 
men are fiends incarnate. You may not believe me, 
but I do assure you that at frequent intervals in my 
life I have met honest, just, and moral men. Have 
you met none? " 

" In the Brown Borough I meet excellent men. 
Older and wiser men, who sit on committees and 
behave like one conglomerate uncle to the poor; 
young lovers too hopelessly out of work to marry, 
and yet always gay and good-hearted; large tired 
fathers who come in after a day's work and sit under 
dripping washing and never slap the children . . . 
But that such just men are not in a majority is proved 
by the fact that women continue to suffer." 

298 



I POSE 

" Yes, but perhaps they suffer at the hands — not 
of men — but of circumstances." 

" Circumstances always favour people with a pub- 
lic voice." 

" And do militant suffragettes really think that by 
smashing windows they will attain to a public voice ? " 

" In what we do, we're a poor argument for the 
Franchise. In what we are, we're the very best. 
It's not possible for the community to be hit with- 
out deserving it. It must look round and find out 
why it is hit — not how. Punishment is no good 
to a smasher of windows. Any woman can see if 
she's wrong without punishment. If she thinks she's 
right, punishment can never alter her opinion." 

" Smashers must be punished. It would be im- 
possible to allow even the righteous to take the law 
into their own hands." 

" In whose hands should we leave it? In the 
hands of those who declare themselves to be our 
enemies? A fair question from a woman never gets 
a fair answer. Windows are smashed — not as an 
argument, but as a protest." 

*' A protest strikes me as a futile thing. No one 
ever does anything that looks unfair or tyrannical 
without being perfectly sure that was the thing they 
meant to do. If a protest is successful it creates dis- 
cord without altering what Is done. If it's unsuc- 
cessful, it leaves you with a high temperature and 
bruised hands, and what is gained by that? " 

" Protest isn't a thing you argue about," said the 

299 



I POSE 

suffragette. " It's a thing you do when you see red. 
You seem to think that men have the monopoly of 
the last straw." 

" It is hard to believe that you have reached the 
last straw," said Samuel. " It is very hard for men 
to picture women as an oppressed race. We are 
miles and miles away from each other. I can still 
think of a lot of things to say, but I can't say them 
without a moral megaphone. Shall we call a 
draw?" 

" Let's," said the suffragette, relaxing her militant 
expression. " Only let me have the last word — a 
rather long one. Of one thing I am certain — when 
we have the vote, men will see what a small gift it 
was, and future generations will ask why it was 
grudged so bitterly. Only to us who have fought 
for it and suffered for it, it will always seem high and 
splendid — like a flag captured in battle . . ." 

" The country is looking pretty just now, isn't it? " 
said Mr. Samuel Rust. 

The gardener was standing at the window, watch- 
ing the clipped yew bird outside curtseying to the 
wind. He had been pathetically silent, like a 
snubbed child, ever since he had consented to be a 
friend and not a lover. His white keen face was a 
striking illustration of enthusiasm damped. His jaw 
looked as if he were clenching his teeth on something 
bitter. I think he was regretting the days when 
gold hair with a ripple in it as laboured as the rip- 
ples in an old Master's seascape, wide blue eyes 

300 



I POSE 

alight with matrimonial instinct, and the very red 
lips of a very small mouth, were all that his heart 
needed. 

And I wonder what the suffragette saw in his face 
that made her say in a very non-militant voice, 
" Come, gardner." 

They both shook hands in rather an absent-minded 
way with Mr. Samuel Rust. They started from the 
door with the wind behind them. It was with her 
hair blowing forward along her cheeks that the gar- 
dener always remembered the suffragette most viv- 
idly. It brought a brave idea to his mind, con- 
nected vaguely with a picture of Grace Darling with 
which he had been in love fifteen years ago. 

" Gardener," said the suffragette hurriedly. 
*' Can you imagine me sitting by the fire bathing a 
baby?" 

" Easily," he replied. " I can imagine how the 
firelight would dance upon your hair." 

" That doesn't sound like me at all," she said, 
with a catch in her voice. " Can you Imagine me, 
looking sleepy and cross, giving you early breakfast 
before you went to work? " 

" I can imagine you with the sun behind you, say- 
ing good-morning, so that the word seemed like a 
blessing through the day." 

" It's a lie — you poet," she said. "Why don't 
you open your eyes and see me as I am? " 

" I've had my eyes open all along. It's you who 
are blind." 

301 



I POSE 

" Then — suppose we become both lovers and 
friends . . . Suppose we get married on Tues- 
day . . ." 



302 



To-morrow I will don my cloak 
Of opal-grey, and I will stand 
Where the palm shadows stride like smoke 
Across the dazzle of the sand. 
To-morrow I will throw this blind 
Blind whiteness from my soul away, 
And pluck this blackness from my mind, 
And only leave the medium — grey. 

To-morrow I will cry for gains 
Upon the blue and brazen sky: 
The precious venom in my veins 
To-morrow will be parched and dry. 
To-morrow it shall be my goal 
To throw myself away from me, 
To lose the outline of my soul 
Against the greyness of the sea. 



CHAPTER II 

The suffragette went up to London on Monday 
— Bank Holiday — to contemplate finally the ruin 
of her work. For it was dead. I suppose if she 
had not felt so old and tired she might have thought 
of a fresh beginning, but she was always more pas- 
sionate than persistent. 

I don't think the Brown Borough ever made her 
suffer so much as it did the day she came back to it 
and found no place for her. You must remember 
she had always put work before pleasure, and a new 
joy born had no place in her mind with the pain of 
work killed. The gardener of yesterday retreated 
from the foreground of her mind, and for a while 
she never thought at all of the gardener of to- 
morrow. 

Henceforward we part company with that suffra- 
gette whom I have loved perhaps a good deal, and of 
whom you have wearied. Her heart seemed to take 
on a different colour as she returned for the last time 
to the Brown Borough. What she had preached for 
years conquered her beyond hope at last, the world 
she had fought became suddenly victor. 

She went to Jenny Wigsky, and found her gone. 

She went to see 'Tilda, who was out. But 'Tilda's 
mother spoke out 'Tilda's mind. 

305 



I POSE 

She went to see the priest's sister, and she was 
away for Easter. But the priest was at home. 

" I had no wish ever to see you again," said the 
priest. *' But It Is as well that we should meet, for 
I should like to make my position and that of my 
sister perfectly clear to you, yerce, yerce." 

" It is perfectly clear," said the suffragette, who 
felt curiously numb. 

" Excuse me, but I do not wish that you should 
go away under the delusion that you are In the right 
though persecuted, and In your self-absorption pro- 
ceed to make havoc of another field of work. Setting 
aside the fact that you have been guilty of bad faith 
towards us, you have approached the work from a 
wilfully wrong standpoint. You have mixed your 
despicable little political jealousies with Christian 
work, to the serious danger of young and Innocent 
souls." 

" I worked for the honour of women, and you — 
possibly — for the honour of your God. Certainly 
your work sounds better — to men." 

" If there Is a thing that women excel In, It Is the 
art of evading the point," said the priest bitterly. 
"The affair, bluntly put, Is this: Jane Wigsky, an 
Idle, vicious, and Immoral girl, had the Impudence to 
go to my very good friend, Mr. Smith, of Smith, 
Bird and Co., and, presuming on her showy appear- 
ance, to apply for a responsible post, a post which is 
in every way suited to be the reward of virtue, rather 

than something for the covetous to grasp at. Mr. 

306 



I POSE 

Smith is, as I say, a friend of mine, and a most gen- 
erous friend to the Church, having only last week 
presented a beautiful carved chancel screen. 
Naturally It was my duty to tell him all I knew about 
the girl." 

" And what did you know? " 

" I am not obliged to answer to you for my state- 
ments, but, as a matter of fact, I told him that the 
girl was not a ' stayer ' — In colloquial language — 
and that she was of Immoral tendency." 

" That was only what you fancied. What did you 
know?" 

There was a swallowing sound In the priest's 
throat, a sound as of one keeping his temper. 

" May I ask If you are aware that the girl has 
now disappeared, with her lover? " 

" But that was since you wrote." 

*' I have not worked for twenty-two years among 
the poor without reaching a certain Insight into char- 
acter; I am not blind to such things, whatever you 
may be, yerce, yerce. But that is beside the point. 
I reminded Smith that he might be able to give her 
less Important employment — I was willing to help 
the girl up to a certain point. I suggested a protege 
of my own for the better post, to whom the generous 
opportunity offered would be far more suitable, a 
very deserving young man, who Is debarred from 
ordinary employment by the loss of a leg. Mr. 
Smith accepted my suggestion, and offered Jane Wig- 
sky a post as packer, at seven-and-six a week, a much 

307 



I POSE 

larger wage than she has been getting lately. She 
refused, and put the responsibility of her refusal on 
you. She also mentioned that other girls in the 
Church Club were under your influence on the ques- 
tion of wages. I made enquiries and found that my 
sister's club was in a fair way to turn into a female 
Trade Union, an abominable anomaly. I took the 
only course possible. I dismissed all the misguided 
girls from the Club. There is nothing more to be 
said." 

" Nothing," said the suffragette, who had become 
very white, " except — what must your God be like 
to have a servant like you? " 

" If you are going to blaspheme," said the priest, 
" kindly leave my house at once." 

" If God is like that . . ." she said, " I pray the 
Devil may win." 

She ran out of the house childishly, and slammed 
the door. 

The gardener, on Tuesday morning, was parting his 
hair for the third time, when he received a telegram : 

" Don't come. — Suffragette." 

It startled him, but not very much. He looked at 
the third attempt at a parting in the glass, and saw 
that it was an excellent parting for a man on his wed- 
ding-day. He reflected that a militant sufi^ragette 
would naturally tend to become ultra-militant on this 
final day. And if the worst came to the worst, it 

could do no harm to go up and find out how bad the 

308 



I POSE 

worst was. So he went up to London by the eleven 
train. 

He was to meet her at the Httle bun-shop that 
clings for protection to the Brown Borough Town 
Hall. There the suffragette had a fourpenny meal 
daily, and there they had arranged to have an eight- 
penny meal together, before assuming the married 
pose. There was a " wedding-shop " round the 
corner. I don't suppose any couple ever made less 
impressive plans. 

And the gardener pursued the plan. He entirely 
ignored the telegram. 

I don't know whether the suffragette was confi- 
dent that he would obey it, or that he would ignore 
it. I am entirely doubtful about her state of mind 
on that day. But I know that when the gardener 
arrived at the bun-shop she was there, facing the 
door, already half-way through her fourpenny lunch. 
Which appears to show that — if her telegram was 
genuine — she put implicit faith in his obedience. 
In this case she was presumably displeased to see him. 
Her face, however, looked too tired to change its 
expression in any way. 

" Didn't you get my wire? " she said. 

"What is a wire to me?" asked the gardener, 
sitting down. 

There was a long pause, during which he ordered 
a Welsh Rarebit from a waitress who, six months 
ago, would have furnished him with an ideal of 
womanhood. 

309 



I POSE 

" Why did you wire? " he asked presently, 

" I have to go on a journey," said the suffragette, 
waving at the mustard-coloured portmanteau, which 
was seated on a chair beside her, 

" In that case, so have I," said the gardener. 
" We'll get married first, and then go on the journey 
together," 

No reply. Their talk was like broken fragments 
thrown upon a sea of ice. It hurried, faltered, 
stopped, and then froze into a background of silence. 

The gardener noticed that the suffragette was 
trembling violently, and with a great effort he made 
no comment on this discovery. 

Finally she rose, leaving quite twopence-halfpenny 
worth of her meal hiding beneath her knife and fork, 

" You'll have to show me where this registry office 
is," said the gardener, " and also what to do. I 
don't know how one gets married." 

*' Neither do I," said the suffragette. 

" I'll carry your bag." 

" I like carrying things, I hate being helped. 
You must always remember that I am a militant suf- 
fragette." 

*' I am never allowed to forget it," sighed the gar- 
dener, his ardour rather damped. " Are we getting 
near the place? " 

" Very near." 

They stopped at the steps of a church. 

" We might have thought it our duty to be married 
in a church," she said. " What a merciful escape ! " 

310 



I POSE 

He was silent. 

" I hate God," she added. 

" Don't," said the gardener. " You're too ex- 
cited. Don't tremble like that. Don't hate God. 
After all, He made the world — a green sane world 
— with you and me in It . . ." 

" He made it with you in it. But I got in by mis- 
take." 

" What a happy mistake ! " said the gardener. 
" Come into the church, my dear, and rest for a mo- 
ment. Don't try to look too deep into the reasons 
of things, you'll only get giddy." 

He took her hand, and they went up the steps to- 
gether. 

" It's a fine church," he said. " That screen's a 
fine bit of carving." He felt as if he had taken 
charge of his suffragette's nerves, and he busied his 
brain in the composition of cool and commonplace 
remarks. 

" That chancel screen is dirty. It's the gift of 
foul hands, bought with foul money. Do you think 
me mad? " 

" You are, rather, you know. Pull yourself 
together. Surely you're not frightened of getting 
married to me? " 

The suffragette laughed. " You wonderfully 
faithful friend," she said. 

The gardener was not a religious young man. He 
was not quite rare enough in texture for that, and he 
was a little too clever for the religion of his fathers. 

311 



I FOSE 

The Christian pose had never appealed to him, It was 
not unique enough. All his Hfe he had seen prayer 
used as a method of commercial telegraphy. You 
wanted a thing, and from a kneeling position you In- 
formed Heaven of your order. If It was complied 
with, you knew that you must be appreciated In high 
quarters; If It was Ignored, you supposed that your 
message had miscarried, and despatched another. 
At any rate It cost nothing. 

But the gardener had a vague reverence Inborn In 
him. During his everyday life he posed as an un- 
believer. When in his own unposing company he 
passively believed In something he had never defined. 
But under stained-glass windows or the benediction 
of music, under arched forests and a sinless sky, un- 
der the passionate sane spell of the sea, under the 
charm of love, he knew that he worshipped. For 
he was a poet without the means of proving It, and to 
such God Is a secret mouthpiece, and a salvation. 

So, at the back of the church, beside the suffragette, 
he pressed his face Into his hands, and his elbows 
on to his knees, and found to his surprise that his 
heart was beating violently. Between his fingers he 
could see the east window. Its blood-like splashes 
of red, Its banners of unearthly blue, its blur of 
golden haloes glorified the sunlight. It seemed to 
have a colour for each of his days; he found his 
childhood In It, and his little ambitions, his pale Tra- 
la-la days, and the babyhood of his heart, red hair 
he found, and the ardour of the sea, and love . . . 

312 



I POSE 

And presently he looked round and found his com- 
panion had gone from his side. 

He could see her, with her chin up, looking defi- 
antly at the altar. The sunlight dramatically 
touched her distant face, and it was like a pin-prick in 
the twilight of the church. It was but seldom that 
nature provided a good setting for my suffragette. 

It was only when he saw her with the mustard- 
coloured portmanteau raised shoulder high that he 
realised what she was doing. The knowledge tore a 
gash across his dreams, and severed him from him- 
self. He did not move. He watched her throw the 
portmanteau at the foot of the chancel screen. He 
saw her wrap her arms about her face and swing 
round on her heel. He hardly heard the explosion, 
but directly afterwards he realised how loud it had 
been. 

Smoke danced across the altar, smoke blotted out 
the window, smoke threaded the lace of the shattered 
screen. Smoke . . . Silver in the sunlight . . . 
blue round the altar . . . and grey — dead grey — 
over the little crumpled body of the criminal. Smoke 
stood over her, a transitory monument — like a tree 
— like a curse. 

Yes, I pose of course. But the question is — how 
deep may a pose extend? 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



T 



HE following pages contain advertisements of 
a few of the Macmillan novels. 



NEW MACMILLAN FICTION 



The Research Magnificent 

By H. G. wells 

Author of " The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman," etc. 

Clot/i, I2mo, $1.50 

The Research Magnificent Is pronounced by those critics who 
have read it to be the best work that Mr. Wells has done, realizing 
fully the promises of greatness which not a few have found in its 
immediate predecessors. The author's theme — the research mag- 
nificent — is the story of one man's search for the kingly life. A 
subject such as this is one peculiarly suited to Mr. Wells's literary 
genius, and he has handled it with the skill, the feeling, the vision, 
which it requires. 

" It has been over a month since The Research Magnificent came 
from the press. In that month the book has been reviewed from 
one end of the country to the other, but I have not written anything 
about it for the good reason that I have been all of this time 
reading it, a little at a time, with much thought spent between the 
sentences, with all sorts of comments and memories and injunctions 
crying to be written in the margins and with the towering im- 
mensity of the thing awing me into either an incoherence of super- 
latives or silence. I have waited for the clarity of impression that 
comes with the closing of the covers of a book that has marked an 
epoch in my literary life. . . . The Research Magnificent is a book 
whose intensity of influence will be immeasurable in the lives of 
those who read it. It is enthralling In its sheer literary magnifi- 
cence." Fannie Butcher in the Chicago Tribune. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



NEfV MACMILLAN FICTION 



The Star Rover 



By jack LONDON 

Author of "The Call of the Wild," "The Sea Wolf," 
" The Mutiny of the Elsinore," etc. With frontis- 
piece in colors by Jay Hambidge. 

Clot/i, J2mo, $1.50 

Daring in its theme and vivid in execution, this is one of the most 
original and gripping stories Mr. London has ever written. The 
fundamental idea upon which the plot rests — the supremacy of 
mind over body — has served to inspire writers before, but rarely, 
if indeed ever, has it been employed as strikingly or with as much 
success as in this book. With a wealth of coloring and detail the 
author tells of what came of an attempt on the part of the hero to 
free his spirit from his body, of the wonderful adventures this 
" star rover " had, adventures covering long lapses of years and 
introducing strange people in stranger lands. 

" Jack London has done something original in the Star Rover, 
and done it supremely well." — Nevj York Times. 



Old Delabole 



By EDEN PHILLPOTTS 

Author of " Brunei's Tower," etc. 

Cloth, I2mo, $1.50 

Delabole is a Cornish slate mining town and the tale which 
Mr. Phillpotts tells against it as a background, one in which a 
matter of honor or conscience is the pivot, is dramatic in situation 
and doubly interesting because of the moral problem which it 
presents. Mr. Phillpotts's artistry and keen perception of those 
motives which actuate conduct have never been better exhibited. 

" Old Delabole," says Elia W. Peattie in the Chicago Tribune, 
" is unusual. Its characters stand up boldly like monoliths against 
a gray sky. The struggle of life and the philosophy of life, old 
age as well as youth, dullness as well as quiet wisdom, play their 
part in the tale." 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64^66 Fifth Avenue New York 



NEU' MACMILLJN FICTION 

The Extra Day 

By ALGERNON BLACKWOOD 

Dec. cloth, I2mo, $1.35 

The joyousness of life lived in an imaginative world is Mr. 
Blackwood's theme, a theme not unlike Maeterlinck's The Blue- 
bird. His new story is fine in literary quality and in imaginative 
conception. 

A group of delightful children learn to gain for themselves an 
" extra day " which, as a matter of time, does not count, and this 
day is filled with wonderful adventures. As in some of his other 
writings Mr. Blackwood plays about the idea that little children 
are so close to the line that divides the mysteries of the spiritual 
world from the actualities that in fancy they pass back and forth 
across this line. 

"A very charming flight of exquisite fancy, fascinating to grown- 
ups who have the slightest spark of youth still flickering within 
them," is the Diiliith Herald's comment on The Extra Day. " It 
fixes more firmly than ever the title that has been so well bestowed 
upon Algernon Blackwood — ' artistic realist of the unseen world.' " 

—Duluth Herald. 

Heart's Kindred 

Bv ZONA GALE 

Author of " Christmas," " The Loves of Pelleas and Etarre," etc. 

Cloth, i2mo, $1.35 

There is much of timely significance in Miss Gale's new book. 
For example, one of the most interesting and powerful of its scenes 
takes place at a meeting of the Women's Peace Congress and in 
the course of the action there are introduced bits of the actual 
speeches delivered at the most recent session of this congress. But 
Heart's Kindred is not merely a plea for peace; it is rather the 
story of the making of a man — and of the rounding out of a 
woman's character, too. In the rough, unpolished, but thoroughly 
sincere Westerner and the attractive young womai\ who brings 
out the good in the man's nature. Miss Gale has two as absorbing 
people as she has ever created. In Heart's Kindred is reflected 
that humanness and breadth of vision which was first found in 
Friendship Village and The Loves of Pelleas and Etarre and made 
Miss Gale loved far and wide. 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64r-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



DATE DUE 








1 








































































































! 


































CAYLORO 






PRINTCO IN U ft. A 



Ui /^iHi'HI HN REGIONAL LIBRARY LACILITY 



AA 000 605 553 






